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THE COLVER LECTURES 

IN BROWN UNIVERSITY 

1920 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

By 
Arthur Lord 



QSroi»n Unii?er0it^, ^§e Coft?et ^eetures, 1920 



PLYMOUTH 
AND THE PILGRIMS 



BY 
ARTHUR LORD 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

<$i)t ^itoer^ibe ^xt^^ Cambribge 
1920 



^ 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY BROWN UNIVERSITY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



/.6^o 



o '^-^^ " 



OCT 29 1920 
g)CI.A601171 



THE Colver lectureship is provided by a fund of 
$10,000 presented to the University by Mr. and 
Mrs. Jesse L. Rosenberger of Chicago in memory of 
Mrs. Rosenberger's father, Charles K. Colver of the 
class of 1842. The following sentences from the letter 
accompanying the gift explain the purposes of the foun- 
dation : — 

"It is desired that, so far as possible, for these lectures 
only subjects of particular importance and lecturers emi- 
nent in scholarship or of other marked qualifications shall 
be chosen. It is desired that the lectures shall be dis- 
tinctive and valuable contributions to human knowledge, 
known for theu* quality rather than their number. In- 
come, or portions of income, not used for lectures may 
be used for the publication of any of the lectures deemed 
desirable to be so published." 

Charles Kendrick Colver (1821-1896) was a graduate 
of Brown University of the class of 1842. The necrologist 
of the University wrote of him: "He was distinguished 
for his broad and accurate scholarship, his unswerving 
personal integrity, championship of truth, and obedience 
to God in his daily life. He was severely simple and un- 
worldly in character." 

The lectures now published in this series are: — 

1916 

The American Conception of Liberty and Government, by 
Frank Johnson Goodnow, LL.D., President of Johns 
Hopkins University. 

1917 

Medical Research and Human Welfare, by W. W. Keen, 
M.D., LL.D. (Brown), Emeritus Professor of Sur- 
gery, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia. 



1918 
The Responsible State: A Reexamination of Fundamental 
Political Doctrines in the Light of World War and the 
Menace of Anarchism, by Franklin Henry Giddings, 
LL.D., Professor of Sociology and the History of 
Civilization in Columbia University; sometime Pro- 
fessor of Political Science in Bryn Mawr College. 

1919 
Democracy: Discipline: Peace, by William Roscoe Thayer. 

1920 
Plymouth and the Pilgrims, by Arthur Lord. 



CONTENTS 

I. Plymouth before the Pilgrims 1 

II. The Pilgrims before Plymouth 58 

III. Plymouth and the Pilgrims 117 



PLYMOUTH 
AND THE PILGRIMS 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

The Pilgrim movement can be but im- 
perfectly understood if treated as an iso- 
lated event in the world's history, without 
reference to the conditions which pre- 
ceded it and made its success possible. 
Looking at it broadly, it was part of a 
great world movement, and its relation to 
that movement must be considered in 
order to understand its meaning and ap- 
preciate the result. 

No fact has had a greater influence on 
the history of civilization, as stated by an 
eminent scholar, than that "the land of 
the globe is divided into two great sec- 
tions, the mass of Europe, Asia, and 
Africa on the one side and the two Amer- 
icas on the other, and that one of these 
1 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

worlds remained unknown to the other 
till only four hundred years ago." 

The fact that the New World was situ- 
ated at such a distance from the other at a 
time when, unlike the present, the waste 
of oceans divided, not united, the two 
continents, made it possible to break old 
traditions, to revise old institutions, and 
to think out a new philosophy to fit an in- 
fant society, and at the same time what- 
soever there was in the inheritance from 
the Old World which seemed good and 
available might be kept. It was an op- 
portunity which had never before been 
offered in history, and in the study of 
modern institutions that fact must al- 
ways be borne in mind, for its influence 
upon the result can never be overesti- 
mated. 

It must be remembered also how singu- 
larly helpful in the development of the 
North American continent was its con- 
figuration, its geographical and topo- 
graphical details. When Magellan in 1520 
passed through the straits which bear his 
2 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRBIS 

name and sailed northward through the 
dreary wastes of the Pacific, he had es- 
tabhshed the fact that the earth was in 
reahty a globe, not a plane, and that the 
New World was separated from the Old 
on both sides by a thousand leagues of 
ocean. 

When Champlain landed upon the 
Isthmus of Panama, as reported in his 
narrative of a voyage to the West Indies 
and Mexico in the years 1599-1602, his 
keen vision noted, as he stood by the little 
river which rises in the mountains and 
descends to Porto Bello, that 

One may judge that if the four leagues of land 
which there are from Panama to this river 
were cut through, one might pass from the 
south sea to the ocean on the other side, and 
thus shorten the route by more than fifteen 
hundred leagues, and from Panama to the 
Straits of Magellan would be an Island, and 
from Panama to the New-Found-Lands would 
be another island, so that the whole of Amer- 
ica would be in two islands. 

Again a glance at the map shows that 
the line of early discoveries established 
3 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

the fact that the territory which we call 
the United States has its eastern shores 
deeply indented by great bays and its in- 
terior pierced by mighty rivers, later to 
become the highways of commerce, which 
made possible the rapid growth of settle- 
ment as soon as political conditions per- 
mitted, which would have been impossible 
elsewhere. For instance, the headwaters 
of the Hudson nearly meet the mighty St. 
Lawrence and almost permitted the bark 
of the early voyager to encircle that north- 
eastern part of the continent lying south 
of the St. Lawrence and east of the Hud- 
son, as if it were an island. English forces 
in the Revolution recognized that fact, and 
it was part of their strategy to separate 
New England from the other colonies by a 
union of the forces of Sir William Howe 
and Burgoyne on the western bank of the 
Hudson. A union of the Potomac flowing 
into the Chesapeake with the Ohio flowing 
into the Mississippi, and the Mississippi 
into the Gulf of Mexico, makes another 
island with these arteries as its northern 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

and western boundary, and the Atlantic 
and the Gulf as its southern and eastern 
boundary. Washington urged that the 
capital city of the United States be lo- 
cated on the banks of the Potomac be- 
cause he anticipated the union of the 
waters of the Ohio and the Potomac by 
a canal. His clear vision saw the possi- 
bility, in this junction of the waterways, 
of the interchange of the produce of east 
and west along this imperial highway. 
Through ages this New World had slept 
unnoticed by the voyagers and explorers 
of Europe, if we omit that incident, not a 
factor in its development, of its discovery 
by the Northmen. 

Without entering into any analytical 
discussion of those Norse voyages, or of 
the claim that the "Cape Kjalarnes" of 
Thorwald is Cape Cod, "Cape Kros- 
sanes" is the Gurnet, and that on the 
Gurnet, at the entrance of Plymouth 
Harbor, the bold Norseman was buried — 
without accepting that view too literally, 
the conclusion which I have reached, after 
5 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

a somewhat careful consideration of the 
arguments pro and con, is that so well 
stated by the latest and best writer upon 
the subject in his ** Voyages of the Norse- 
men to America," William Hovgaard, late 
a Commander in the Royal Danish Navy 
and Professor of Naval Design and Con- 
struction in the Massachusetts Institute 
of Technology, published in 1914, that the 
Norsemen gave to Cape Cod the name of 
"Cape Kjalarnes" and to a headland, 
either at Nahant or Marblehead or one of 
the other headlands near by, the name of 
"Krossanes." With this passing reference 
I proceed to the consideration of the re- 
corded and undoubted explorations of 
that part of the North American conti- 
nent now mainly included within the lim- 
its of the present United States. 

When in 1492 Columbus landed on the 
Island of Guanahani, which he called 
"San Salvador," in the West Indies, and 
raised the Spanish flag, the title of Spain 
in the New World, based upon discovery 
merely, began, and at once the rival claim 
6 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

of Portugal, by reason of her discovery of 
the Azores, was presented. The contro- 
versy between these two Cathohc coun- 
tries was submitted to the Pope for his 
decision, and on the 3d of May, 1493, 
Pope Alexander VI issued his Bull of 
Demarcation conferring upon Spain all 
the lands and islands found or to be 
found, discovered or to be discovered in 
the western ocean, drawing a line from 
north to south. 

As was to be expected, such a grant of 
territory could not be accepted by Por- 
tugal without a protest, and on the next 
day a second bull modified the first by 
fixing the Spanish donation to the west 
of a meridian drawn one hundred leagues 
west of the Azores and Cape de Verde 
Islands. 

By the treaty signed at Tordesillas on 
June 7, 1494, Spain yielded to the demand 
of Portugal and agreed to the moving of 
this line west to a distance of three hun- 
dred and seventy leagues west of the Cape 
de Verde Islands, namely, between the 
7 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

forty-first and forty-fourth meridians 
west of Greenwich, and under this new 
Hne of partition the Brazihan coast came 
to Portugal. 

When charters were granted to the 
Cabots and others for the New World, 
these charters, in order to be as therein 
stated "without prejudice to Spain and 
Portugal," did not grant territorial rights 
south of forty-four degrees north, a line 
running through the present Nova Scotia. 
John Cabot in 1497 had made his landfall 
on the shores of the New World at some 
point north of Halifax. How far south 
along the coast of North America Sebas- 
tian Cabot sailed is a matter of contro- 
versy, but it is generally admitted that 
Verazzano, under a commission from 
Francis I of Portugal, sailing northward 
from the Carolinas, entered the bays of 
New York and Newport and then coasted 
along the shore nearly to Cape Breton. 
His letter to Francis of July 8, 1524, is the 
earliest original and contemporaneous 
description of the Atlantic coast along 
8 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

which he sailed. If he followed the shore- 
line as closely as his letter would indicate, 
it is probable that his frail bark was the 
first European vessel which the Indian 
watcher on the hill at Plymouth ever saw. 
The extent and influence of the early 
fisheries in emphasizing and developing 
the importance of the discovery of the 
New World as a source of food supply to 
continental Europe, were a prime factor 
in stimulating the long line of exploring 
expeditions in the sixteenth century. An 
English captain, John Rut, writes to 
Henry VIII on August 3, 1527, that in the 
harbor of St. John, Newfoundland, he 
found "eleven sails of Normans and one 
Brittaine and two Portugal barkes all 
afishing." By 1577 France was vigorously 
and successfully carrying on the fishery 
with not less than one hundred and fifty 
vessels, and at that date Spain had one 
hundred ships employed, flying her flag, 
and the flag of Portugal flew on fifty 
Portuguese ships. Under the English 
statute there were one hundred and fifty- 
9 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

three days in the year when Enghsh citi- 
zens were required to abstain from flesh 
and eat fish, and as early as 1548 the first 
Enghsh statute which relates to the New 
World refers to the adventures and jour- 
neys of her fishermen into Iceland and 
Newfoundland, and "other places com- 
modious for fishing and the getting of 
fish." Two hundred English ships went 
each year to the Grand Banks by 1600 
and employed on board and on shore ten 
thousand men and boys. 

The first English charter for American 
colonization was granted to Sir Hum- 
phrey Gilbert, and in 1583 he entered the 
harbor of St. John and found there thirty- 
six vessels of different nations. 

With the dawn of the seventeenth cen- 
tury the annual voyages were so regular 
that one fishing captain, it was said, had 
made forty consecutive trips. When we 
consider the imperfect methods of naviga- 
tion, the size and rig of the little vessels, 
and the distance from home ports of the 
Grand Banks, it would seem that the en- 
10 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

comiums which Burke paid to the hardy 
fishermen of New England in his speech on 
"Concihation with America," apply with 
even greater force to those daring navi- 
gators of the sixteenth century. The 
controversies over the rights of the fish- 
eries and fishing grounds were between 
France and England, for Spain made no 
claim to exclusive rights. The claim of 
England to these shores rested on the 
discovery by Cabot and the occupation 
by Gilbert. 

May I briefly recall some of the first at- 
tempts of exploration and colonization? 
In 1506 Jean Deys, of the port of Har- 
fleur, published a map of this recently dis- 
covered coast, and two years later Thomas 
Aubert, a pilot sailing from the port of 
Dieppe, on his return brought with him to 
France an Indian captive, the first visitor 
from the New World to the Old. 

The early French attempts to form set- 
tlements in Canada were unsuccessful. 
Jaques Cartier had discovered and ex- 
plored the Bay of Chaleurs as early as 
11 



PLYIMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

1534, and in the following year he sailed 
up the St. Lawrence as far as the Saguenay 
River, to an island where he spent the 
winter, and the next spring continued his 
voyage up the St. Lawrence to the present 
site of Montreal. The severity of the cli- 
mate was fatal to many of his company 
and he returned to France to renew the 
attempt again to form a colony in Canada 
in 1541, and again to meet with disap- 
pointment and failure. 

Ribaut's expedition was equally unsuc- 
cessful. He built a fort near the spot 
where Charleston is situated, but famine 
and disease swept through the little set- 
tlements and the few survivors escaped 
with difficulty. 

The expeditions of Rene de Laudon- 
niere and De Gourgues to Florida were as 
unsuccessful as their predecessors. The 
Spaniards, if not more enterprising, were 
more successful than the French explor- 
ers, in the extent of their explorations. 
Ay lion planted a colony in 1526 on the 
Atlantic coast north of Hatteras, possibly 
12 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

on the site of the Enghsh settlement 
nearly a hundred years before Jamestown, 
only to perish without leaving any trace 
of its struggle and failure. 

De Soto had landed in Florida in 1539, 
penetrated through the interior to the 
Mississippi River, explored the river as 
far north as New Madrid, and paid the 
penalty of his daring and his enterprise 
with his death, and is buried in the chan- 
nel of the river whose waters have never 
given up the secret of his burial-place. 

Pedro Menendez de Aviles, whom 
Channing has well described as the 
"bloodiest Spaniard who has ever cursed 
the American soil — and one of the 
ablest," in 1565 lands in Florida, brutally 
destroys the French settlements, and 
plants the first permanent settlement in 
the New World. 

Perhaps the most picturesque and strik- 
ing adventure of the sixteenth century 
was the extraordinary march of three of 
the members of the company of John 
Hawkins, who sailed in October, 1567, on 
13 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

his third voyage to the New World. His 
fleet consisted of five vessels, three of which 
were lost in his great fight with the Span- 
iards in September, 1568, at Vera Cruz. 
Somewhere to the northward of what i& 
now the Bay of Tampico in Mexico, in the 
October following the fight at Vera Cruz, 
he set ashore one hundred and fourteen of 
his ship's company. Three of these, whose 
names should not be forgotten, David 
Ingram, Richard Browne, and Richard 
Twide, marched northward through the 
unknown and pathless forests, and at last, 
after nearly twelve months of laborious 
journey, reached the Atlantic coast, south 
of Cape Breton, where they found a 
French ship, which returned them in 
safety to their English homes. Perhaps 
the names of those dauntless three are 
still as worthy of preservation as the 
names of those who fell on the English 
side at Agincourt — 

"Edward, the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, 
Sir Richard Keltey, Davy Ham, Esquire, 
None else of name." 

14 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

The English expeditions to the New 
World in the sixteenth century were as 
fruitless of permanent settlement as the 
French. Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583 
sailed with seven ships on his voyage to the 
west and northwest of America. The ex- 
pedition reached Newfoundland, posses- 
sion was taken in the name and right of 
England, and Gilbert sailed for home on a 
little ship of ten tons, called the "Squir- 
rel," and was lost on the passage. If the 
result of the adventure was not impor- 
tant, yet he at least left behind him the 
memory of a gallant deed and words of 
courage and of faith which may well have 
been an inspiration to the adventurous 
seamen who followed. 

"He sat upon the deck. 

The Book was in his hand, 

*Do not fear, Heaven is as near,' 
He said, *by water as by land!'" 

The expeditions of Sir Walter Ralegh, 
Sir Richard Grenville, of PhiKp Amadas 
and Arthur Barlowe, contributed infor- 
mation as to the coast-line south of the 
15 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

Chesapeake, but their attempts at Roa- 
noke Island and elsewhere were as- fruit- 
less as those which had preceded them. 

It is interesting to note what an impres- 
sion of accomplishment and success these 
early voyages of exploration and discov- 
ery had made upon the minds of the 
dauntless navigators of that period. The 
spirit which inspired Sir Martin Fro- 
bisher as early as 1576, in his search for 
the northwest passage, to sail the un- 
charted seas, was because he knew "this to 
be the only thing in the world that was left 
yet undone, where a notable mind might 
be made famous and fortunate." The 
sixteenth century closed with no perma- 
ment settlement as yet established north 
of Florida. 

The destruction of the Spanish fleet at 
Cadiz and the defeat of the Armada in 
1588 secured the early settlements of the 
seventeenth century against Spanish at- 
tack, and yet the apprehension of peril 
from the Spaniards lingered for many 
years, and was a factor in determining 
16 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

their location. The general instruction 
given to the first expeditions of the seven- 
teenth century was to find a location in 
the New World up some river, at some 
distance from the seacoast, so that there 
would be less danger from and more se- 
curity against the Spaniards. 

One consideration which deterred the 
Pilgrim Company from settlement in 
Guiana was that "if they should there 
live and did well, the jealous Spaniard 
would never suffer them long, but would 
displant or overthrow them, as he did the 
French in Florida; who were seated fur- 
ther from his richest countries." William 
Wood, writing as late as 1634, referring to 
the apprehension of Spanish attack and 
the reasons why it should not deter the 
plantations along the New England coast 
at least, says: 

Some say the Spaniard layes claime to the 
whole country, being the first discoverer 
hereof, and that he may make invasion upon 
those parts as well as he hath done upon S. 
Christophers, and S. Martins, and those 
places; but it doth not follow that because he 

17 



PLYMOUTH AND THE I^TLGRIMS 

tooke such places as lay just in his way to the 
West Indies, that he should come thousands 
of miles with a great Navie to plantations, as 
yet not worth the pillage: and when the plan- 
tations are growne noted in the eyes of the 
common foes for wealth, it is hoped that when 
the Bees have Honie in their Hives, they will 
have stings in their tailes.^ 

In the settlements which marked the be- 
ginning of the seventeenth century two 
material factors must be considered : first, 
the grounds upon which the colonists 
based their right and title to their posses- 
sions in the New World; and second, that 
other factor which contributed so much to 
the result; namely, the early and success- 
ful adventures were under the manage- 
ment and control of chartered companies 
who brought to the solution of the prob- 
lems, which had so often resulted in the 
destruction of the infant colonies of the 
preceding century, business experience and 
enterprise, initiative and ample means. 

The title which the settlers acquired in 
the New World was based upon one or 

* New England's Prospect, p. 57. 
18 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

more of these five grounds : first, prescrip- 
tion or discovery; second, possession and 
occupancy; third, purchase; fourth, treaty 
stipulations; and fifth, conquest. 

At the outset the title of Spain, France, 
Portugal, Holland, and England to the 
New World rested upon the right of dis- 
covery. This principle of law, generally 
adopted by all European nations in case 
of a conflict of title, involved the determi- 
nation as to whether the flag of the claim- 
ant country flew at the masthead of the 
first discoverer. If it were conceded at first 
that a nation could acquire title in some 
little island because a navigator sailing 
under the King's commission had landed 
there and planted his country's flag, it 
could not long be conceded that a mere 
landing and nothing more gave title to 
the whole of the New World. 

The English claim was based upon the 
discovery by Cabot and the alleged fact 
that he had coasted the shores of the New 
World from the place of his landfall as far 
south as Virginia. The next step was to 
19 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

assert and maintain the proposition that 
the title by discovery must be consum- 
mated by actual settlement and posses- 
sion. If it were conceded that the Indians 
had title to the soil by virtue of aboriginal 
occupancy and possession, such use and 
occupancy must have been actual and not 
merely desultory or constructive. The In- 
dian title to the soil was acquired by the 
Pilgrim Company not only under the 
patent defining their territorial limits, but 
also by purchase from the aboriginal pro- 
prietors. 

The seventeenth century in American 
history is the century of occupation, not 
merely of discovery, the century of explo- 
ration of the interior and not of the coast 
alone; the century of permanent settle- 
ment and colonization; the century of real- 
ization and not of hopes frustrated and am- 
bitions defeated and dreams unfulfilled. 

Under the charter of 1606 which King 
James gave to Sir Thomas Gates and his 
associates and under which the first per- 
manent English settlement was made, the 
20 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

territories granted lay between the thirty- 
fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north 
latitude, and were subject to the limita- 
tion **not then possessed by any other 
Christian prince or people." But in fact 
the English title to a large part of North 
America, if claimed to be based on dis- 
covery or occupation, was finally settled 
by the sword. 

The grantees named in this charter of 
1606 to Sir Thomas Gates and his asso- 
ciates were divided under its terms into 
two colonies and companies. The first, 
the London or Southern Company, was 
granted authority to locate its plantation 
in some fit and convenient place between 
the thirty-fourth and forty -first degrees of 
north latitude, and when so located the 
charter granted them fifty miles north 
and fifty miles south of such location, as 
well as one hundred miles into the sea and 
one hundred miles into the land. The 
second, or Northern or Plymouth Com- 
pany, composed of citizens of Bristol, 
Exeter, and Plymouth, was granted per- 
21 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

mission to locate its plantation between 
the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth degrees 
of north latitude, with the same territorial 
extent. The grants were made subject to 
the condition that colonies should not be 
planted within a hundred miJes of each 
other. Each colony had a council and over 
both was the council called the Council of 
Virginia, established in London. 

In that charter were two provisions 
which were of vital influence in the devel- 
opment of the new settlements which later 
were to be established by these two com- 
panies. The first was that the inhabitants 
and their children born in these new plan- 
tations or settlements were to have and 
enjoy all "Liberties, Franchises, and Im- 
munities as if they had been abiding and 
born within the English realm." And 
second, the provision that the lands 
granted were to be "holden of Us, our 
Heirs and Successors, as of our Manour of 
East Greenwich in the County of Kent, in 
free and common Soccage only and not in 
Capite." 

22 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

The charter granted to the Northern 
Virginia Company in November, 1620, 
and under which the patent of 1620 and 
the Bradford patent of 1629 were issued, 
out of special precaution added to the 
words "in Capite" the words "nor by 
knights service." These two provisions, 
often overlooked in the story of New Eng- 
land plantations and development, de- 
serve some analysis and explanation. Be- 
fore the settlement at Plymouth it was, of 
course, certain that the English settlers in 
this New World would bring with them 
not only the language, manners, customs, 
traditions, and history of England, but it 
was also determined that they would 
bring with them its statutes and common 
law, and the rights, privileges, and liber- 
ties of Englishmen, and the protection of 
the English flag. The tenure and descent 
of lands was also fixed and the effect of 
these provisions in the development of 
the English settlements at Plymouth and 
elsewhere cannot be disregarded nor over- 
estimated. 

23 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

The phrase "free and common socage" 
describes the tenure by which a man holds 
his estate in lands. As defined in the char- 
ter, it is not in capite or by knight's serv- 
ice, but by a tenure free from any personal 
or military service. By the later statute 
of 12 Charles II, c. 24, the tenure by 
knight's service was abolished and all the 
lands were declared to be henceforth held 
"in free and common socage." The tenure 
in capite was where the holding was of the 
person of the King, and the tenure by 
knight's service was military in its charac- 
ter, required the possession of a certain 
quantity of land, and compelled the 
owner to attend his lord to wars forty 
days in every year, if called upon. 

This statute of Charles II [says Blackstonel 
was a greater acquisition to the civil property 
of the kingdom than even Magna Charta it- 
self, since that only pruned the luxuriances 
which had grown out of military tenures, and 
thereby preserved them in vigor. But the 
statute of King Charles extirpated the whole 
and demolished both root and branch. 

The practical effect in the New World 

24 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

then was that they acquired a freehold es- 
tate upon which there was no obHgation 
for service, and the only limitation was 
the fifth of all ores which might be found 
in the mines on their property. 

The other definitive term, "as of the 
manour of East Greenwich in our County 
of Kent," created a tenure in gavelkind 
peculiar to the county of Kent; of its dis- 
tinguishing properties the principal one is 
that under that tenure "the lands descend 
not to the eldest, or any one son only, but 
to the sons together. Gavelkind, give all 
kynd; that is, to all the male children." ^ 
Whether that privilege was granted to the 
men of Kent because of their determined 
resistance, or because of their ready sub- 
mission to William the Conqueror, or 
whether "it carry an Antiquity far greater 
than the time of the Norman Conquest," 
as Somner thought, is of course not here 
material. It was a form of tenure then for 
the yeomanry and not for the nobility; 
this abolition of primogeniture, this di- 
* Somner, Treatise on Gavelkind^ 1660. 
25 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

visible inheritance made impossible a 
feudal system here. 

The provisions of the Colony Law of 
1633, reenacted in 1658, provided "that 
inheritance do descend according to the 
commendable custome of Engl, and hold 
of Est. Greenwich." But under the General 
Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth, 
revised and established in 1671, it was 
enacted that 

Whatsoever lands have or shall be granted by 
the court to the respective townships or to 
any particular persons, either by the court or 
particular townships, shall be held to them, 
their heirs, successors and assigns forever, 
according to the most free tenor of East 
Greenwich in the county of Kent, in the realm 
of England, granted unto us in our charter 
and patent and our inheritances to descend 
according to the tenure thereof.^ 

And under the General Laws of 1671 
(p. 299), it was provided that 

all the Sons of any persons having lands in 
fee simple shall be Heirs, . . . the Eldest Son 
shall have double to any of his Brethren, and 
all the younger equal Shares of the Land of 
^ Colony Laws, p. 279. 
26 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

their Ancestors, and when there is but one son, 
he shall be sole heir . . . and where there is no 
son, all the daughters shall inherit alike. 

Now that modification of the law of gavel- 
kind, and of the manor of East Green- 
wich, you will find the reason for in Deu- 
teronomy XXI, 17: 

If a man have more sons than one, the eld- 
est shall have a double portion assigned him. 

This establishment of freehold lands or 
lands held in fee simple, and its division 
among all the sons, was an efficient factor 
in securing the permanent settlement of 
the country by actual cultivators of the 
soil. 

In 1609 a new charter was given by the 
King to the Southern or First Colony, by 
which the King granted to the "Treasurer 
of Company of Adventurers of the City of 
London for the First Colony in Virginia" 
the lands extending along the seacoast 
two hundred miles to the northward of 
Point Comfort and two hundred miles to 
the southward, and the islands lying 
within a hundred miles along said coast 
27 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

and **up in to the land throughout from 

the sea west and northwest." In 1620 

a charter was granted to the Duke of 

Lenox and others therein, called the 

" Plymouth Company," under which they 

took title to the land lying between the 

fortieth and forty-eighth degrees of north 

latitude. 

Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the 

Supreme Court of the United States in the 

case of Johnson and Graham, Lessees, 

vs. Macintosh,^ refers and conforms his 

opinion to 

the principle which has been supposed to be 
recognized by all European governments from 
the first settlement of America — the abso- 
lute, ultimate title has been considered as 
acquired by discovery, subject only to the 
Indian title of occupancy, which title the dis- 
coverers possessed the exclusive right of ac- 
quiring. 

Under the powers granted by the char- 
ters the grantees therein issued their pat- 
ents to such grantees as they might se- 
lect, by whom or their assigns the actual 

1 8 Wheaton, p. 543. 
28 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

occupancy of the patented territory might 
be reasonably expected, and the perma- 
nent settlements were based upon these 
chartered rights, so far as relate to the 
English occupation of the country. 

It was reserved to the seventeenth cen- 
tury to witness the realization of the dreams 
of French and English discoverers and ex- 
plorers to establish in the New World per- 
manent colonies. It is material briefly to 
note here the establishment of the perma- 
nent French settlements along the banks 
of the St. Lawrence and the shores of the 
Bay of Fundy, and that of the Dutch at 
New Netherland. 

In 1603 Pierre du Gast, Sieur de Monts, 
was named by the King of France Vice- 
Admiral of the coast of Arcady from the 
fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of north 
latitude, and in the following year he was 
made the Lieutenant of the same territory. 
With the aid of the merchants of the 
seacoast towns of France, De Monts 
equipped three ships, and taking Cham- 
plain with him he sailed from Dieppe in 
29 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

1603. The ships with De Monts and 
Champlain, upon their arrival in the Bay 
of Fundy, selected an island which it was 
thought was adapted for permanent set- 
tlement, the ships were unloaded and sent 
back to France, fort and houses built, and 
a permanent settlement effected. The 
tercentenary of the settlements of De 
Monts and Champlain was celebrated in 
1904. The next three years Champlain 
was busily engaged in exploring the coast 
as far south as Cape Cod, and in 1607 re- 
turned with De Monts to France. 

The settlement of New Netherland by 
the Dutch discoverers, industrious, frugal, 
brave men of whom it has been said "they 
also imported the lights of the Roman 
civil law and the purity of the Protestant 
faith," was brought later into close con- 
nection with the settlement at Plymouth. 

In 1609, in a little vessel called the 
"Half Moon," manned by sixteen Eng- 
lishmen and Hollanders, the Amsterdam 
directors sent Henry Hudson to the New 
World. Sailing from the Texel on the 6th 
30 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

of April, he first readied Newfoundland, 
then Acadia, then, steering southwest, 
discovered Cape Cod, and followed the 
coast as far south as Cape Henlopen, then 
northward to the great river which he first 
discovered and explored, and which bears 
his name. It was not his happy fortune 
ever to return, either to the North or Hud- 
son River, or to the coast of New Eng- 
land, for the next year he sailed to the bay 
and straits which bear his name in the Far 
North, a mutinous crew set him and five 
of his companions afloat in an open boat, 
and he was never heard of more. 

Hudson's report was effective in induc- 
ing the Dutch merchants under authority 
of the States General to equip a ship, and 
in the year 1614 a small fort on an island 
in the North River was built and garri- 
soned, and the Dutch possession and oc- 
cupancy began. 

The Netherlands claim covered the 

territory from Delaware River to Cape 

Cod, including the island in Long Island 

Sound and along the coast, and extending 

31 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

up the Hudson River as far as Albany, 
and up the Connecticut River to Fort 
Good Hope. The Dutch title to this terri- 
tory, acquired by discovery, occupation, 
and purchase from the Indians, was prior 
and superior to that of the English as a 
matter of strict construction of then ad- 
mitted principles, but the Netherlands 
lacked the adequate force to protect the 
rights of their settlers so obtained, and 
half a century later the Dutch were ex- 
pelled by force from the territory which 
they had won and enjoyed. 

It is necessary only to refer briefly to 
the Gosnold expedition of 1602 to Mar- 
tha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Isles, 
and to the settlement at Sagadahoc. The 
Gosnold expedition sailed from Falmouth 
on March 26, 1602, in a small bark of 
Dartmouth called the "Concord," and 
consisted in all "of two and thirtie per- 
sons." Brereton in his relation, first pub- 
lished in 1602, thus simply describes the 
first recorded landing of Englishmen on 
the New England coast, "Capt. Bar- 
3^ 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

tholomew Gosnold, myself and three 
others went ashore." 

This first landing was made at Cape 
Cod, and because of the extraordinary 
abundance of fish in the vicinity the ap- 
propriate name "Cape Cod" was given to 
the cape, well known to early voyagers. 
This was the first time an English name 
was given to any part of New England, 
and from the same expedition we get 
the names of "Martha's Vineyard" and 
"Elizabeth Isles." 

The Popham Colony at Sagadahoc had 
but a brief and unimportant existence. It 
sailed in June, 1607, and the little vessels 
returned in the following October and De- 
cember to England, leaving behind them 
forty-four persons. The next year the 
ship from England brought the news of 
the death of Sir John Popham, late Chief 
Justice and foremost patron of this un- 
successful expedition, and the settlement 
was finally abandoned. "There were," 
says Gorges, "no more speeches by the 
northern company of settling any other 
33 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

plantation in those parts for a long time 
after." It is recalled merely as one of the 
steps in the forward movement of emigra- 
tion and settlement of the New World. 

The Jamestown settlement in 1607 was 
by the authority and under the control 
and direction of that first or Southern or 
London Company, organized under the 
charter of James I, dated April 10, 1606. 
It may be proper, perhaps, in this connec- 
tion to note some points of resemblance 
and difference which it presents in com- 
parison with the settlement of that Pil- 
grim Company which, nearly fourteen 
years later, left England under the same 
authority and the same charter. 

The total tonnage of the three little 
ships which left England on January 1, 
1607, for the Chesapeake was less than the 
tonnage of the " Mayflower " alone. The 
" Susan Constant " was of the burden of a 
hundred tons, the " Godspeed," forty tons, 
and the "Discovery" had a tonnage of 
only twenty tons, making a total tonnage 
of one hundred and sixty, as compared 
34 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

with the " Mayflower's " one hundred and 
eighty tons. The number of passengers on 
the three ships was substantially the same 
as that of the Mayflower Company, one 
hundred and five Jamestown colonists and 
one hundred and two Plymouth colonists. 
But there was an important difference be- 
tween these two companies; neither wife 
nor mother was a passenger on the James- 
town ships, while the Mayflower Com- 
pany was in effect the migration of fami- 
lies, the removal of homes, and "their 
hearths as well as their altars went with 
them on the voyage." 

The losses of the settlers of Virginia 
were far in excess of those sustained by 
the English settlements in New England. 
Famine, pestilence, and Indian massacre 
took a heavy toll of life from those early 
voyagers. Within four months from the 
landing at Jamestown nearly half of the 
total number had perished by disease or 
Indian attack. The winter's storms at 
Plymouth were more merciful than the 
summer's heat in Jamestown, for in the 
35 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

four months from the landing at Plymouth 
only forty-four had died. Before the first 
year had passed the number of James- 
town settlers had been reduced to forty. 
The mortality of the Virginia colonists, as 
stated by Dr. Tyler, was extraordinary. 
Out of a total of fourteen thousand emi- 
grants from 1607 to 1622, only nine hun- 
dred and eleven survived at the close of 
the year 1622. The estimates of Alexander 
Brown, and accepted by Dr. Channing, 
are much less extravagant and undoubt- 
edly more accurate, but are singularly 
impressive as to the price paid for the free- 
dom which the New World gave. 

"From 1606 to 1625," says Brown, 
"5649 emigrants left England for Vir- 
ginia, and in 1624 only 1095 were living." 
Out of twelve hundred emigrants who 
sailed from England in 1619 and the first 
three months in 1620, one thousand died 
on the voyage or after their arrival in the 
Virginia colonies. Although the Virginia 
colonists did not enjoy the right or privi- 
lege of electing their governors and their 
36 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PDLGRIMS 

form of government was in many respects 
much less democratic than that of Ply- 
mouth, it is a fact not to be forgotten that 
the first representative legislative assem- 
bly which ever met in America was con- 
vened on July 30, 1619, each of the eleven 
boroughs into which the Virginia colony 
was then divided being represented by 
two delegates. 

Before the Pilgrims, then, had deter- 
mined to seek a home in the New World, 
representative government, the great con- 
tribution to the science of government of 
the Anglo-Saxon race, was firmly estab- 
lished in that New World which now 
furnishes the best example of its possibili- 
ties for greatness and success. 

When the attention of the members of 
Robinson's church in Leyden was directed 
towards establishing a home beyond the 
seas and to the means of accomplishing 
that undertaking, there were north of the 
Spanish settlement at St. Augustine only 
the English colony on the Chesapeake Bay 
and the James River; the Dutch trading- 
37 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

post at Manhattan on the Hudson; and 
the French settlements on the St. Law- 
rence and the shores of the Bay of Fundy 
— the three strategic points on the At- 
lantic coast, not merely for their practical 
advantages of defense, but for their un- 
limited possibilities for the trade, com- 
merce, and enterprise of the coming years 
and the future generations. 

But at the time that the Pilgrims sailed 
from England there was no harbor, except 
at those three points, which had been so 
carefully explored, mapped, and sounded 
as the harbor at Plymouth. The ships of 
three nations, England, France, and Hol- 
land, between 1600 and 1620, had visited 
what is now Plymouth, and the maps or 
charts of the voyages and the relations of 
these expeditions, as told by the naviga- 
tors and explorers, preserve that interest- 
ing part of America's history. 

First in time was the expedition under 

command of Captain Martin Pring, who 

sailed from Bristol in June, 1603, with two 

barks, one of fifty tons called the "Speed- 

38 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE TIIE PILGRIMS 

well," with thirty men and boys; the 
other named the "Discoverer," of twenty- 
six tons, with thirteen men and boys. 
With him went as his assistant one Robert 
Salterne, who had been with Gosnold in 
his voyage to New England the year be- 
fore, and to whom we are indebted for the 
description of the voyage. The story is 
told by Purchas in the fourth volume of 
his '* Pilgrims." To the bay of Plymouth 
he gave the name of Whitson Bay, in 
honor of that John Whitson, then mayor 
of the city of Bristol, England, and one of 
the " Chief e adventurers" and patrons of 
his expedition. He gives a full description 
of the natives and of the plants, trees, 
beasts, fowls, and fish which he found 
there. The wheat, barley, oats, and peas, 
and sundry sorts of garden seeds, though 
late, soon came up very well, "giving cer- 
tain testimony of the goodness of the cli- 
mate and of the soil." With the sassafras, 
which he describes as a plant of sovereign 
virtue and which was used as a febrifuge 
and as a specific in certain diseases, he 
39 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

loaded his small bark and sent her home to 
England. Beasts and fowls were found in 
great number and variety, and "as the 
land is full of God's good blessings, so is 
the sea replenished with great abundance 
of excellent fish." 

One curious but unimportant fact 
seemed, to him at least, worthy of re- 
membrance, that he had taken with him 
from Bristol two excellent mastiffs whose 
names even are preserved, "Foole" and 
"Gallant," great and fearful, "of whom 
the Indians were more afraid than of 
twenty of our men." The names of the 
dogs live, the names of heroes are for- 
gotten. 

In the twenty-second volume of Pie- 
ter van der Aa's Collection of Voyages 
published in Ley den in 1707, is given a pic- 
ture of the barricade of Bring on the shore 
of Plymouth Bay, in which was kept dil- 
igent watch and ward for the "advertise- 
ment and succor of the men while they 
should work in the woods." The picture 
shows the wooded shores, the barricade 
40 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

built of logs, with an entrance and what 
may be two kennels on either side for the 
two great mastiffs, some Indians armed 
with bow and arrow, others dancing, and 
in the forefront the figure of an English- 
man with his musket on his left shoulder 
and carrying in his right hand the rest 
from which it was fired. 

The next voyager to enter Plymouth 
Harbor, of whose expedition we have a 
full record, is that of Samuel de Cham- 
plain, who, on the 18th of July, 1605, en- 
tered the little bay, now known as "Ply- 
mouth Harbor." He says that some of the 
Indians "begged us to go to their river. 
We weighed anchor to do so, but were un- 
able to enter on account of the small 
amount of water, it being low tide, and 
were accordingly obliged to anchor at the 
mouth." Champlain went ashore and 
made an examination of the river, which 
to him appeared only as an arm of water 
extending a short distance inland, and 
"running into this is merely a brook, not 
deep enough for boats except at full tide." 
41 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

His reference here is possibly to the Town 
Brook, the entrance to which was at high 
tide a small harbor, used as late as the last 
century for the purpose of wintering small 
vessels, and where the traces of the 
wharves are still seen to which the rev- 
enue cutter was moored as late as the War 
of 1812. Champlain's map, which ap- 
peared in his edition of his voyages, pub- 
lished in 1613, shows the Gurnet as a 
wooded point at the entrance, and the 
two islands in the bay "which are not 
seen till one has entered, and around 
which it is almost entirely dry at low 
tide." 

Slafter, in his edition of the ''Voyages 
of Samuel de Champlain," published by 
the Prince Society says in a note at vol. ii, 
page 78: 

This delineation removes all doubt as to the 
missing island in Plymouth harbor, and shows 
the incorrectness of the theory as to its being 
Saquish Head, suggested in a note in Young's 
Chronicles. 

I cannot agree with Dr. Slafter's conclu- 

42 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE TIIE PILGRIMS 

sion, for it seems to me to be clear that 
the island is what is now known as Sa- 
quish, and which, within the recollection 
of men living in the last century, was at 
times of extreme high tide or storm an 
island, and around which in small sloops 
the fishermen and pilots of the bay had 
been able to sail. The theory that it was 
Saquish is also supported by other maps 
to which I shall hereafter refer. This har- 
bor Champlain named the "Port du Cap 
St. Louis" and on the map is marked 
"Port St. Louis." If Champlain's map is 
accepted as an accurate description of the 
Plymouth Harbor at that time, it strongly 
supports the claim that Plymouth beach 
was formerly wooded, for the map shows 
trees upon what appears to be the beach. 
But perhaps of more interest and im- 
portance in the accuracy of its description 
was the voyage of Adrian Block to Ply- 
mouth in the spring of 1614. The Dutch 
at Manhattan had built their first ship. 
They had fitly named it the "Onrust," or 
the "Restless," and had entrusted its first 
43 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

voyage to the experience and skill of 
Adrian Block as its sailing master. This 
little vessel was forty-four and one half 
feet long, eleven and one half feet wide, 
and of about sixteen tons burden. It was 
not the first decked vessel built in the 
United States; that distinction belongs to 
the "Virginia" of Sagadahoc. 

Block sailed along the shores of the Con- 
necticut, passed the Vineyard and Nan- 
tucket, rounded the Cape, and dropped 
anchor in the harbor of Plymouth, which 
he called "Crane Bay," then sailed north- 
erly by Foxhaven, now Boston, to Pye 
Bay, probably Nahant. In the archives 
at The Hague is a map called the "Fig- 
urative Map," prepared by Block, or 
from data furnished by him. It recog- 
nizes the French title above latitude 40° 
and the English below 45°, but to the 
territory between 40° and 45° the Dutch 
claim title and gave to it the name of 
"New Netherland." The harbor of Ply- 
mouth and the Town Brook are clearly 
shown, the position of the Gurnet well 
44 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

marked. Two significant and interesting 
points are, first, two islands lying inside 
the Gurnet, one later known as "Clark's 
Island" where the Pilgrims passed the 
first Sunday; the other, what is now the 
promontory of Saquish, but which here 
appears as an island, confirming the de- 
scription of Champlain and later authori- 
ties, and the statements of the old pilots 
that they could recall when at certain 
stages of the tide Saquish Point was sur- 
rounded by water. Secondly, the map 
shows clearly a channel making of Cape 
Cod an island and following generally the 
line of the present Cape Cod Canal. 
Probably Block did not sail up the creek 
or river to which Bradford refers when 
he writes of Manomet: 

Standing on the sea to the southward of 
them, in to which by another creek on this 
side they would carry their goods and then 
transport them over land to their vessel, and 
so avoid the compassing of Cape Cod and 
those dangerous shoals. 

Block sailing along the shore to the 

south of the Cape and finding the mouth 

45 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

of a river there, and then passing along 
the interior or northern Hne of the Cape 
and noting another river or creek extend- 
ing into the land, might naturally infer 
that there was a channel or river from 
Cape Cod Bay to Buzzard's Bay, and that 
the Cape was an island. On a map of New 
England by John Seller, hydrographer to 
the King, believed to be printed about 
1675, there appears the name of "Crane 
Bay," and in the map by Pieter van der 
Aa of New England, as described by 
Smith in the two voyages made by him in 
1614 and 1615, and published about 1707, 
we also find the names "Crane Bay" and 
"Plymouth" given as "Patuxet als New 
Plymouth." In a map of the coast of New 
England, printed probably about 1721, 
at or near Nauset Bar there is a break 
through Cape Cod, giving to the end of 
the Cape the appearance of an island. 

In the month of April, 1614, Captain 
John Smith sailed from London with two 
ships to America. The purpose of the ex- 
pedition was in part to engage in the 
46 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

whale fishery and also to search for mines 
of gold and copper. They were unsuccess- 
ful in securing the purposes of the voyage, 
and leaving the ships to be employed in 
the cod fishery, Smith with eight others 
ranged the coast in a small boat. His de- 
scription of New England, printed in 
1616, makes this reference to Plymouth: 

Then come you to Accomack, an excellent 
good harbor, good land; and no want of any 
thing to industrious people. After much 
kindness upon a small occasion we fought also 
with 40 or 50 of those, (i.e. natives) ; though 
some were hurt and some slain, yet within an 
hour after they became friends. 

In this account Smith gives the name 
"Accomack" to Plymouth, and in his 
map, before the changes made by Prince 
Charles, Plymouth was so named. 

Upon his return to England he pre- 
sented his account of the voyage with the 
map to Prince Charles, later Charles I of 
England, asking His Highness to be 
pleased to change "their barbarous names 
for such English as posterity might say 
Prince Charles was their god father." On 
47 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

Smith's map Prince Charles, therefore, 
changed the name of **Cape Cod" to 
"Cape James," gave in place of the 
Indian name of ''Accomack" the name 
of "Plymouth," and twenty-nine other 
places, which upon Smith's map appeared 
for the most part with their Indian names. 
Prince Charles renamed with English 
names. This map of Smith's gives no de- 
tails of Plymouth Harbor other than its 
latitude and relative position upon the 
New England coast, and for that reason is 
less instructive and important than either 
the Champlain or Block map, where the 
coast-line, islands, points, and in the 
Champlain map the soundings, are clearly 
shown. 

Smith's relation of his voyages to New 
England he caused to be printed to the 
number of two or three thousand, "One 
thousand with a great many maps both of 
Virginia and New England I presented to 
30 of the chief companies in London at 
their Halls." His contributions to the 
knowledge and settlement of the New 
48 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

World by reason of these voyages of ex- 
ploration and discovery, and his full and 
complete accounts of the same, should 
preserve forever his name in grateful re- 
membrance. His love for, and interest in, 
Virginia and New England is quaintly 
stated in a fine passage in which he says : 

By that acquaintance I haue with them, I 
call them my children; for they haue beene 
my Wife, my Hawks, Hounds, my Cards, my 
Dice, and in totall, my best content, as indif- 
ferent to my heart as my left hand [is] to my 
right. 

In his "True Travels, Adventures and 
Observations," which includes a continua- 
tion of his general history of Virginia, the 
Summer Isles, and New England from 
1624 to 1629, and which was printed in 
1630, he makes this reference to the Pil- 
grim settlement,^ that in New England 

Nothing would be done for a plantation till 
about some hundred of your Brownists of 
England, Amsterdam and Leyden went to 
New Plymouth, whose humorous ignorances 
caused them for more than a year to endure a 
1 Arber, p. 892. 
49 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

wonderful deal of misery with an infinite pa- 
tience; saying my books and maps were much 
better cheape to teach them than myself e; 
many others have used the like good hus- 
bandry that have paid soundly in trying their 
self-willed conclusions. 

The last voyage to Plymouth of which 
we have any record before the arrival of 
the Pilgrims was by Captain Thomas 
Dermer, who wrote an account of the voy- 
age which is printed in the first volume of 
*'Purchas's Pilgrims." In that descrip- 
tion of his voyage along the coast of New 
England to Virginia, no definite reference 
to Plymouth is made. In "The Brief Re- 
lation of the Discovery and Plantation of 
New England and of Sundry Accidents 
therein occurring, from the year of our 
Lord 1607 to this present 1622," dedi- 
cated by the President and Council of 
New England to the Prince's Highness, 
Dermer is reported as having said, after 
leaving his ship at Monhegan, that "he 
coasted the shore from thence, searching 
every harbor and compassing every cape 
land till he arrived in Virginia." And 
50 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

Dermer was considered by the Council of 
Plymouth as the original discoverer of the 
coasts lying between the Hudson and the 
southern shore of Massachusetts on the 
route of Long Island Sound. 

In the letter from Dermer to Samuel 
Purchas, from Captain Martin's planta- 
tion in Virginia, he says that on the 19th 
of May, 1619, in an open pinnace of five 
tons he passed along the coast and found 
"some ancient plantations not long since 
populous, now utterly void. In other 
places a remnant remains but not free of 
sickness." This disease he identifies as 
the plague, from his examination of the 
sores of some of the natives who had sur- 
vived, and their description of the "spots 
of such as usually died." 

When he arrived at Patuxet or Ply- 
mouth, the native country of the savage 
who accompanied him as guide and inter- 
preter, there was no remnant left of the 
native tribe. He then traveled westward 
from Plymouth about a day's journey to 
what is now Middleborough, and from 
51 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

there sent a messenger to So warns, which 
the Rhode Island Historical Society has 
identified as near the railroad station of 
Hampden Meadows. The two native 
kings, probably Massasoit and his brother 
Quadaguina, returned with the messen- 
ger, and in the conference which followed 
"my savage and I discoursed unto them, 
being desirous of noveltie, and they gave 
me content in whatsoever I demanded." 
On this expedition he redeemed two 
Frenchmen who three years before had 
been wrecked on Cape Cod. The purpose 
of his expedition accomplished, he sails 
from Plymouth, around the Cape, through 
Long Island Sound, to Virginia. 

It is one of the striking circumstances 
connected with the settlement at Ply- 
mouth that this was the place selected by 
the last voyager along the coast as the 
best locality for a permanent English set- 
tlement. Gorges says that Dermer sent 
him a "journal of his proceeding with the 
description of the coast all along as he 
passed," and in that relation he writes: 
52 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PH^GRIMS 

I will first begin with that place from 
whence Squanto or Tisquantum was taken 
away, which on Captain Smith's map is called 
Plymouth. ... I would that the first planta- 
tion might here be seated if there come to the 
number of fifty persons or upwards. 

The Indian who accompanied Dermer 
on this expedition has an interesting his- 
tory and to him the Pilgrim Company 
later owed a debt which can hardly be 
estimated. His name is variously given as 
"Tisquantum" or "Squanto," and he is 
thought to have been the Indian whom 
Gorges refers to as "Tasquantum," who 
returned with Captain Weymouth to Lon- 
don in 1605 and there lived for three years. 

Tisquantum, or Squanto, as Bradford 
calls him, and whom he describes as "a 
native of this place, who had been in Eng- 
land and could speak better English than 
Samoset," was one of the Indians referred 
to in Smith's account of his first voyage 
to New England in 1614 with two ships. 
Smith says that he returned to England in 
the bark within six months after his de- 
parture with a lot of furs, train oils, and 
53 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

fish, leaving the other ship to fit for Spain 
with dry fish, but that the master, one 
Thomas Hunt, "betrayed four and twenty 
of the savages aboard his ship and most 
dishonestly and inhumanly, for their kind 
usage of me and all our men, carried them 
to Malago and there, for a little private 
gain, sold those silly saluages for Rials of 
Eight: but this vile act kept him ever 
after from any more employment in those 
parts." 

Rescued from slavery in Spain by some 
kindly priests, Squanto was sent to Eng- 
land and while there lived with the gov- 
ernor of the Newfoundland company, who 
also held the ofiice of treasurer, a mer- 
chant by the name of John Slanie, who 
lived in Cornhill. During Dermer's visit 
to Newfoundland during the years 1616- 
18, he saw Tisquantum. From Newfound- 
land Dermer returned to England and 
was again sent to Newfoundland on a 
fishing voyage. From Newfoundland he 
starts for Virginia, taking with him 
Squanto, making the stop at Patuxet, 
54 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE Pn^GRIMS 

which has been above described, and 
leaving there Squanto, the last survivor 
of that tribe which had roamed the 
woods, tilled the fields, fished the streams, 
camped upon the shore, loved, feasted, 
fought, and died, alone with the empty 
wigwams, the untilled fields, and the un- 
marked graves of his people, and there he 
waits the arrival of the Pilgrims. 

Tell me, man of military science, tell 
me, student of the voyages of the naviga- 
tors, explorers, and discoverers of the New 
World, where on that wide-flung seacoast- 
line along the Atlantic could a little band 
of Englishmen in December, 1620, have 
found another harbor where during the 
twenty years before their landing the 
ships of three nations had anchored, and 
the Cross of St. George, the white flag of 
Prance, the orange, white, and blue flag 
of Holland, had been planted on its en- 
circling shores, or where the coast-line 
had been so carefully skirted, the harbor 
so thoroughly mapped and chartered, 
sounded and named, as in that sheltered 
55 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

bay of Plymouth? WTiere else lay the 
waiting fields once cultivated, now de- 
serted by the aboriginal proprietors? 
Where else in safety could the simple 
homes of the new settlers have been 
erected, where the Indian tribe which 
once lived there had been removed by 
pestilence, and only a single survivor of 
the tribe remained, than on that shore 
where the Rock lay waiting for Pilgrim 
feet to press and make immortal? And 
where else from Labrador to the Gulf 
could that little company of Englishmen 
have found a friendly Indian, the last sur- 
vivor of his tribe, who had lived in Lon- 
don for many a weary month, had passed 
a lonely figure up and down its busy 
streets and grown familiar with the Eng- 
lish language and English life and customs, 
to become their guide, interpreter, and 
friend, alike familiar with his native land 
and theirs, ready and equipped to show 
them the way to escape alike the perils 
of famine and of the savage foe, and give 
them his rights to those fields and homes? 
56 



PLYMOUTH BEFORE THE PILGRIMS 

Whether you call it a coincidence 
merely, or whether you regard it, as the 
pious annalist did, a marvelous interposi- 
tion of a wonder-working Providence, the 
happy presence of that friendly Indian in 
their new home is one of the most remark- 
able events in human history. 

This was Plymouth before the Pilgrims : 
which they were hereafter to hold, with 
all the rights, privileges, and immunities 
of Englishmen under a title not only the 
broadest known to the English law, but 
also, in a special way for them, the most 
fortunate and the most useful. 

"Here on its Rock, and on its sterile soil. 
Began the kingdom not of kings but men; 
Began the making of the world again." 



II 

THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

I HAVE considered in the former lecture 
those early voyages of exploration and 
discovery which antedated or determined 
the fitness of Plymouth as a place for the 
settlement of an English colony on the 
Atlantic coast, and also some of the influ- 
ences, political and geographical, which 
had fixed the prior settlements under the 
English, Dutch, and French flags at the 
three strategic points for colonization in 
the New World north of Florida, and I 
propose now to present some of the social 
and economic considerations and religious 
influences which inspired, shaped, and 
directed the Pilgrim migration. 

That religious movement in England to 
which has been given different names by 
its friends and its enemies, but which 
more accurately may be defined as 
the Independent Movement, and which 
profoundly influenced the Pilgrims of 
58 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

Scrooby, Leyden, and Plymouth, came as 
a natural and almost inevitable result 
from the translation of the Bible into Eng- 
lish and its publication for general circula- 
tion in that language. 

The great body of the English Bible 
was given to the English nation by Tyn- 
dale in manuscript, and the Genevan Bi- 
ble, which the Pilgrims used, published in 
1557-60, is the publication of the transla- 
tions of William Tyndale and Myles Cov- 
erdale, first printed under the name of the 
"Matthews Bible" in 1537. Erasmus 
(1467-1536), learned and tolerant, to 
whom Tyndale looked not only as a true 
reformer, but also as the great light and 
guide of the age, was the first to give ex- 
pression to the hope that the Bible might 
be translated into the languages of all peo- 
ple, when he so finely said: 

I wish the Gospels were translated into the 
languages of all people, that they might be 
read and known not only by the Scotch and 
Irish and the English, but even by the Turks 
and the Saracens. I wish that the husband- 
man might sing parts of them at his plough; 

59 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

that the weaver might warble them at his 
shuttle; that the traveler may with their nar- 
ration beguile the weariness of the way. 

And Tyndale but followed in his footsteps 

when he said to a critic: 

If God spare my life ere many years I will 
cause a boy that driveth a plough to know 
more of the Scriptures than thou dost. 

The realization of his hopes or dreams 
made it necessary no longer to present the 
oracles of God in a dead language, and to 
make their interpretation the monopoly 
of a priestly class. But not all the ad- 
vanced thinkers of the day went as far, 
for even Sir Thomas More, whose name 
his "Utopia" will always preserve, be- 
lieved that the copies of the English Bible 
should be held at the discretion of the 
bishop, to be given only to those whom he 
should determine to be "honest, sad and 
virtuous." 

But if the Bible itself ought not be 

given to the people for their reading and 

study, still less could the commentaries 

upon its text be printed without a license, 

60 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

as many a publisher and even Brewster 
himself found to his cost. Those who be- 
lieved that the Church should have a form 
of organization less formal and minute 
than in the then existing organization of 
the Church of England found in the texts 
in the Genevan version, and in its side 
notes, the authority for such officers as 
pastors or prophets, teachers, elders, dea- 
cons, widows or helpers,^ and whose du- 
ties Robinson clearly defined. 

At the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury the English people legally were all in- 
cluded within the bounds of the Church 
of England. Practically there were also in 
England those who still adhered to the 
Catholic faith of their fathers, and the 
Protestant Nonconformists, under the va- 
rious names of Separatists, Independents, 
and Baptists. The statutes of England 
then provided for imprisonment without 
bail for those who obstinately refused to 
attend church service or advisedly per- 
suaded others to forbear attendance, or 

^ Cor. xn, 28. 1 Tim. v, 17. Romans xii, 6-8. 
61 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

to receive the Communion, or who were 
present at any unlawful assemblies or 
meetings under color of any exercises of 
religion contrary to the law and statutes, 
and imposed the further penalties that 
the convicted offender, if he did not con- 
form and submit within three months, 
should depart from the realm, or if he re- 
fuse to do so or returned to the realm, 
should be deemed a felon, and the penalty 
was death without benefit of clergy. 

The famous "Millenary Petition" of 
1603, signed by seven hundred and fifty 
ministers, and representing the views of 
a thousand, expressed no dissatisfaction 
with the essential doctrines of the English 
Church, but only with certain of its rites 
and ceremonies, and asked that in the 
future the petitioners should not be re- 
quired to subscribe except to the Thirty- 
Nine Articles and to the Act of Suprem- 
acy. 

To prove that the enforcement of the 
English law bore harshly upon the non- 
conforming men and women holding the 
62 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

ideas of church poHty which the members 
of the Pilgrim Church adopted, there is no 
occasion to mention other cases than those 
cited by Bradford in his "Dialogue," 
where he enumerated six who were pub- 
hcly executed besides such as died in 
prison, among them Henry Barrow, John 
Greenwood, and Jolm Penry, and "many 
others who have been condemned and 
brought to the gallows, and have been re- 
prieved and banished, some of whom we 
have known and often spoken with." He 
refers to four who in the year 1604 were 
forced to adjure the land by oath never to 
return, and to some seventeen or eighteen 
that had died in the London prisons prior 
to the year 1592, besides those who in 
other parts of the land have perished 
by cold, hunger, or "noisomnes of the 
prison," and also to the petition of sixty 
persons committed without bail to the 
prisons of London, and "what numbers 
since those who have been put into com- 
pulsory banishment and other hard suffer- 
ings as loss of goods, friends, and long and 
63 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GIIIMS 

hard imprisonments, under which many 
have died, it is so well known that it 
would make up a volume to rehearse 
them." 

I refer to this persecution because of a 
suggestion in a recent book that the treat- 
ment of the Scrooby Congregation, as 
shown from the records of the Ecclesiasti- 
cal Commission of the Province of York, 
was far from severe. But I think it will be 
found upon examination that the severity 
of the penalty for nonconformity and the 
reported cases where the severe penalty 
had been imposed, and also the fact that 
the little congregation which assembled 
in the Manor House in Scrooby were all 
liable to these penalties, when coupled 
with the suffering and distress which they 
endured in their efforts to leave England 
for Holland, abundantly justiJSed the con- 
clusion that it was due to persecution, 
suffered or feared, that they sought free- 
dom to worship God in the freer air of 
Amsterdam and Leyden. 

I need not repeat in detail the story so 
64 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

admirably told by Bradford in his history 
of the meeting of the little company in the 
Manor House of the Bishop in Scrooby, 
where Brewster lived and held, until the 
last of September, 1607, the position of 
postmaster. It is obvious that these little 
villages of Scrooby and Austerfield could 
have furnished but a small part of the Pil- 
grim emigrants to Holland; in fact there 
are only two of the Pilgrim Company of 
whom it can be said with certainty that 
they came from either of those two towns, 
namely, Brewster of Scrooby, and Brad- 
ford of Austerfield, but the meeting-place 
was at Scrooby, and the people, as Brad- 
ford describes them, "were of sundry 
towns and villages, some of Nottingham- 
shire, some of Lincolnshire, and some of 
Yorkshire." Morton in his "New Eng- 
land's Memorial" fixes the date of the 
organization of the Pilgrim Church at 
Scrooby in 1602, but it is probable that 
he must have referred to the organiza- 
tion of the church at Gainsborough, for 
the numerous references to the Pilgrim 
65 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

Church by Bradford and Winslow, and 
the dates at which they fix the movement, 
show that it could not have been earher 
than 1606, which date is the commonly 
accepted date of the beginning of this 
church. 

Eight miles north from Scrooby is Bab- 
worth, where the Reverend Richard Clyf- 
ton, the Rector and later the Reformist 
minister, preached, and who was for a 
time to be an early leader in the Pilgrim 
Church and colleague with Robinson at 
Scrooby. Twelve miles east of Scrooby is 
Gainsborough where the Reverend John 
Smith came in 1606. Smith later became 
one of the Separatists or Brownist minis- 
ters in Amsterdam, and pressed to the ex- 
treme conclusion that tenet of Brownism 
that the Church of England was an utterly 
false and abominable church, and all its 
ordinances null and void, which divided 
the Separatists in Holland. He held that 
"the separation must ever go back to 
England or go forward to true Baptism. 
All that shall in time to come separate 
66 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

from England must separate from the 
Baptism of England." 

Clyfton and Smith, as well as Brewster 
and Robinson, were men who had been 
educated in the University at Cambridge, 
scholarly and pious leaders of this Inde- 
pendent Movement. They are sometimes 
spoken of as "Brownists," taking that 
name from Robert Browne, who also was 
a Cambridge man, and some time in 
the years between 1580-90 had been a 
preacher at Norwich. Browne's attacks 
on the bishops, his advocacy of the duty of 
separation from the Church of England, 
and of the right to organize these distinct 
congregations, had cost him dear. As he 
says, he had "been committed to 32 pris- 
ons, in some of which he could not see his 
hand at noon day." 

The term **Brownists" was always 
used by the opponents of the Pilgrim 
Church as a term of reproach, and the Pil- 
grims deeply resented its use for Browne 
was believed to have recanted the opin- 
ions which he had often so violently ex- 
67 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

pressed by accepting a Church of Eng- 
land Hving in Northamptonshire and re- 
siding in the parsonage till his death in 
1630. 

The term "Separatists," as a descrip- 
tive word merely, is sufficiently accurate, 
but the true name, as I believe, for these 
independent congregational churches is 
"Independent." It is a curious fact that 
the word "Independent" is not found in 
the Bible nor in Shakespeare. It first ap- 
pears as descriptive of a church as early as 
1610 in a book which the Reverend Henry 
Jacob had published in Leyden, entitled 
"The Divine Beginning and Institution 
of Christ's True, Visible or Ministerial 
Church," where he says, "All which were 
so many proper and distinct churches in 
those times and independent one of an- 
other," and in a later work, published in 
1611, he says, "Each congregation is an 
entire and independent body-politic, en- 
dued with power immediately under and 
from Christ." 

Henry Jacob was a graduate of Oxford, 

G8 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

the minister for several years to the con- 
gregation at Middelburg, and spent a 
few months during 1610 in Leyden, In 
1616 he returned to England and organ- 
ized a church in Southwark, which is 
reputed to be the mother church of the 
Independent denomination. But the Bap- 
tist Church established by Thomas Hel- 
wys in London, on his return from Hol- 
land in 1613, was distinctly Independent 
in polity and prior in time. Apparently 
the word "Independent" was first used in 
Holland and the English Separatists in 
Holland worked out not only the theory 
and the form, but the term "Independ- 
ent." 

Robinson, in his "Apologia" (1619), at 
page 16, defines the true Church as 'Hota, 
Integra & perfeda Ecclesia, ex his parti- 
bus constans immediate & independenter,'' 
Perhaps the importance which Robinson 
attached to the term "Independent" is 
best illustrated by the fact that as there 
was no Latin word even for "independ- 
ent," he coined the word "independenter" 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

for the first edition of his "Apology" 
which was written and printed in Latin. 
The whole sentence in the English edition 
(1625), is as follows: 

Neither was Peter or Paul more one, whole, 
entire, and perfect man, consisting of their 
parts essential and integral, without relation 
unto other men, than is a particular congrega- 
tion, rightly instituted and ordered, a whole, 
entire, and perfect church immediately and 
independently, in respect of other churches, 
under Christ alone. 

A learned student of New England's his- 
tory wrote me some years ago, "I know of 
no nobler sentence in literature or law." 
John Robinson must be recognized as the 
true founder of Independency or Congre- 
gationalism. The basis of the Pilgrim 
Church in Leyden and Plymouth was the 
principles and polity of which Robinson 
was the most eminent, the best known, 
and the ablest exponent. His views as ex- 
pressed in his later writings were adopted 
as the unquestioned polity of that church 
which claims him as its religious teacher, 
preacher, and leader. 
70 



TIIE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

The translation of the Bible into our 
English tongue, as has been said, 

opened to one and all, simple and great, poor 
and rich, learned and ignorant, the treasure 
house of the Divine wisdom : it gave to each in 
the daily round of labor and care, as well as in 
the supreme and testing moments of life, an 
equal and unstinted share in the teachings 
which inspire, the consolations which soothe, 
the faith which can move mountains, the 
hope which endures to the end. 

It was an inevitable conclusion from 
that movement which placed the Bible in 
the hands of English-speaking men and 
women, whose duty and faith required 
them to "search the Scriptures," and who 
believed with Robinson that there was 
more Truth and Light yet to come out 
of His Holy Word, that the Protestants 
would divide into sects, by reason of the 
special emphasis which each leader might 
place on some text in the Bible. An 
independent church was the necessary 
result. "The foundation of our New 
England Plantations," says Winslow, 
"was not laid upon Schisme, division or 
71 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 
Separation, but upon love, peace and holi- 



ness." 



Their faith was not negative, and did 
not consist in the condemning of others, 
but in the edifying of themselves; they 
did not require of any of their members 
"in the confession of their faith that they 
either renounce or in one word contest 
with the Church of England, whatsoever 
the world clamours of us this way. Our 
faith is founded upon the writings of the 
prophets and apostles in which no men- 
tion of the Church of England is made." ^ 
Upon this deep foundation they built 
their independent church, with hope and 
confidence that the gates of Hell could not 
prevail against it. 

It is undoubtedly true, as Winslow 
frankly confessed, that Robinson was 
''more rigid in his course and way at first 
than towards his latter end." In his fare- 
well sermon to that little company of Pil- 
grims on their departure to begin the 
great work of Plantation in New England, 

* Works of John Johnson^ Ashton, vol. m, p. 63. 
72 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

his breadth and Hberahty of vision were 
admirably and definitely shown, and his 
position and their duty clearly stated. He 
instructed and exhorted them, "If God 
should reveal anything to them [us] by 
any other instrument of his, to be as ready 
to receive it as ever they [we] were to re- 
ceive any truth by his ministry." Again 
he reminded them of their Church Cove- 
nant, the basis of their Church Fellowship 
under and in accordance with which they 
covenanted with God and one another 
"to receive whatever light or truth shall 
be made known to them from his written 
Word." That written Word, illumined by 
the radiance of all that the past had 
brought, and to shine forth yet more 
clearly in the further light the future had 
in store, was their final authority and 
guide. To the leaders of the Pilgrims 
and those others at least of the May- 
flower Company who had lived in Leyden 
and shared the teachings of their great 
preacher, teacher, and leader, the name of 
"Brownist" was a "nickname and brand 
73 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

to make Religion and the possession of it 
odious." 

To call them "Separatists " was an "as- 
persion"; their church was a "free cor- 
poration spiritual," and that way in which 
their feet were firmly planted was the In- 
dependent or Congregational way. 

What in brief was the dogma, what the 
polity of this Pilgrim Church? Fortu- 
nately there is conclusive evidence on 
both of these points. William Perkins 
(1558-1602), a Cambridge graduate, a 
learned and scholarly divine, whose writ- 
ings in Robinson's time were scarcely less 
authoritative than those of Hooker and 
Calvin, had gathered into six principles 
the foundation of the Christian Religion : 

The I Foundation of | Christian Religion: 
I gathered into sixe | Principles 

And it is to be learned of ignorant people, that 

they may be fit to heare Sermons with profit, 

and to receive the Lord's Supper with comfort. 

Printed for J. L. and I. L. 1600. 

Brewster's library of some four hundred 
volumes contained thirteen volumes of 

74 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

Perkins's writings, more than of any other 
theologian. In the inventory of Brewster's 
library are named "two little chata- 
chisms," which Dr. Dexter thought were 
probably the catechisms which John Rob- 
inson published at Leyden for the use of 
the Church, being an Appendix to Mr. 
Perkins's six principles of Christian re- 
ligion. It is more probable I think that 
these catechisms were copies of that 16mo 
edition of Perkins's six principles, printed 
in 1606. These six principles as stated and 
explained by Perkins, are as follows: 

1st. There is one God, Creator and Govern- 
our of all things, distinguished into 
the Father, the Sonne, and the Holy- 
Ghost. 
2nd. All men are wholly corrupted with sin 
through Adams fall, and so are be- 
come slaves of Satan, and guilty of 
eternal damnation. 
3rd. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, 
being made man, by his Death upon 
the Cross, and by his Righteous- 
ness hath perfectly, alone by him- 
self, accomplished all things that 
are needful for the salvation of man- 
kind. 

75 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

4th. A man of a contrite and humble spirit, 
by faith alone apprehending and 
applying Christ with all his merits 
unto himself, is justified before God, 
and sanctified. 

5th. Faith commeth only by the preaching 
of the Word, and increaseth dayly 
by it; as also by the administration 
of the Sacraments, and Prayer. 

6th. All men shall rise again with their own 
bodies; to the last Judgment: which 
being ended, the godly shall pos- 
sesse the Kingdome of Heaven; but 
Unbeleevers and Reporbates shall 
be in Hell tormented with the Devil 
and his Angels for ever. 

They are the doctrine of the Trinity, the 
Fall of Man through Adam, Salvation 
by Jesus, Justification by Faith, Faith 
through the Preaching of the Word and by 
the sacraments and prayer, and Resurrec- 
tion of the body, with heaven for the godly 
and hell for the unbelievers and reprobates. 
Mr. Robinson's Appendix or Catechism 
contains forty-six questions and answers. 
The church is defined as — 

A company of faithful and holy people, with 
their seed, called by the Word of God into 

76 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

public covenant with Christ and amongst 
themselves, for mutual fellowship in the use of 
all the means of God's glory and their salvation. 

And the only limitation of its number is 
that it shall not exceed such a number as 
may ordinarily meet together in one place 
for the worship of God. The present offi- 
cers of ministry in the church are the 
pastor : 

1. The pastor [exhorter], to whom is given 
the gift of wisdom for exhortation. 2. The 
teacher, to whom is given the gift of knowl- 
edge for doctrine. 3. The governing elder, 
who is to rule with diligence. 4. The deacon, 
who is to administer the holy treasure with 
simplicity. 5. The widow or deaconess, who 
is to attend the sick and impotent with com- 
passion and cheerfulness. 

And the church, being "a free corporation 

spiritual," is to choose her ministers and 

servants unto whom she is to give wages. 

The outward works of the church are 

six in number, defined as: 

1. Prayer. 2. The reading and opening of 
the Word. 3. The sacraments. 4. Singing of 
Psalms. 5. Censures. 6. Contribution to the 
necessities of the saints. 

77 



PLYMOUTH AND TIIE PILGRIMS 

This was the Pilgrim's creed, this his sira- 
ple form of church government and order. 

The time came when, in the opinion of 
their wise leaders, it was necessary for the 
believers in independency to seek a secure 
refuge under another than the English 
flag. There were then in Holland in 
the city of Amsterdam the ancient Eng- 
lish exile Church, a Scotch Presbyterian 
Church, and possibly the Gainsborough 
Church, which under the Reverend John 
Smith went to Holland about the same 
time as the Pilgrim Church. Both Smith 
and Robinson were at Amsterdam before 
the 17th of October, 1608, for they were 
described in Bishop Hall's Epistles as 
''the ring-leaders of the late separation" 
and at Amsterdam. At the time of the 
Pilgrim migration there was no Separatist 
church at Ley den. 

These Nonconformists in the towns and 
villages of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, 
and Yorkshire knew and appreciated the 
dangers which the exercise of their beliefs 
and the practice of their faith imposed 
78 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

upon them. Prosecutions and persecu- 
tions some had known, and all had feared. 
Some by bitter experience learned the 
misery of an English prison, to others its 
hardships were an ever present danger, 
and yet under the provisions of existing 
law it was impossible for the family to 
migrate without a license from the au- 
thorities. To remain or to go was alike 
perilous and disastrous. 

The first attempt was made to sail from 
Boston in a ship which they had hired for 
the purpose, but the master betrayed to 
the authorities their intended departure. 
They were seized, searched, stripped, and 
imprisoned. After a month had passed 
the greater part were dismissed, but seven, 
the principal men of the company, were 
kept in prison and bound over to the as- 
sizes, and among them William Brewster. 

The next year, 1608, another attempt 
was made. Arrangements were concluded 
with the master of a Dutch ship to meet 
them at some port between Grimsby and 
Hull, where there was a large common, re- 
79 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

mote from any town, and a convenient 
creek where the vessel could lie. Some of 
the party with the baggage sailed down 
the river Trent, which emptied into the 
sea at a distance of twenty-two miles from 
Hull, while the men walked across country 
to the agreed point of meeting. By the 
time the first boatload reached the ship, 
the whole country was raised and a com- 
pany of horsemen and footmen, fully 
armed, were seen marching rapidly to in- 
tercept them. The prudent Dutchman 
weighed anchor, hoisted sail, and his 
vessel with only the first boat-load of 
emigrants soon disappeared below the 
horizon. It is a painful picture which 
Bradford graphically draws of the misery 
of the women and children who were left 
on the shore as the ship departed bear- 
ing the husbands and the fathers. 

There seems to have been after that no 
united effort to get across to Holland, but, 
in spite of opposition and after great diffi- 
culties, all got over, some at one time and 
some at another; some in one place, and 

80 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

some in another; all to meet again with no 
small rejoicing in their destined haven, 
the port of Amsterdam. 

"Then twelve slow years in Holland — changing 

years — 
Strange ways of life — strange voices in their ears; 
The growing children learning foreign speech; 
And growing, too, within the heart of each 
A thought of further exile — of a home 
In some far land — a home for life and death 
By their hands built, in equity and faith." 

But Amsterdam could not long remain 
their home. The dissensions in that Eng- 
lish church into which they had been re- 
ceived as members, were too serious for 
them to cure by any means which they 
could use. In spite of the fact that a re- 
moval from Amsterdam would be greatly 
to the prejudice of their outward estates, 
both in the present and as it proved in the 
years which followed, they decided to find 
a refuge and home in Leyden. And fear- 
ing "that the flames of contention were 
likely to break out in the ancient church" 
in Amsterdam, Robinson and some one 
hundred members, men and women, peti- 
81 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

tioned the authorities of Leyden for per- 
mission to reside in Leyden, *'to have the 
freedom thereof in carrying on their trades 
without being the burden in the least to 
any one." The magistrates reply, ''that 
they refuse no honest persons free ingress 
to come and have their residence in this 
city: provided that such persons behave 
themselves and submit to the laws and 
ordinances," and assure the petitioners 
that their coming will be both "agreeable 
and welcome." 

The Amsterdam Church before the 
division contained about three hun- 
dred communicants, and it is doubtful 
if the Leyden Church at its maximum ex- 
ceeded that number. As a French chroni- 
cler describes it, Leyden, then a city of 
one hundred thousand inhabitants, was 
"one of the grandest, the comeliest 
and most charming cities in the world," 
and Polyander, the Professor of Sacred 
Theology in the University in Leyden 
during a part of the Pilgrims' stay there, 
says: 

82 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

The Low Countries are the best part of 
Europe. Of the Seventeen Provinces of the 
Low Countries Holland is the richest, the 
most flourishing, and the finest. The most 
beautiful and altogether charming city of 
Holland is Leyden. 

From their arrival in 1609 in Leyden to 
their departure in 1620, the Pilgrims had 
their home in this "fair and beautiful city 
but made more famous by the universi- 
tie," and there they enjoyed "a compe- 
tent and comfortable living" as Bradford 
describes it, "but with hard and continual 
labore." 

Brewster became a teacher and printer, 
Robinson entered the university as a stu- 
dent of theology, and was a frequent dis- 
putant in the public debates as a cham- 
pion of Calvinism against the errors of 
Arminianism, in addition to his duties as 
their pastor and his labors as a controver- 
sial writer. The other members of the 
Pilgrim Company in many different, gain- 
ful, but humble occupations were soon 
engaged, and the years passed peacefully. 

The debt which the Pilgrims (and this 
83 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

nation which they helped to found) owed 
to Holland can scarcely be overestimated. 
They had seen in Holland a system of free 
public schools, supported at the public ex- 
pense, and the result was a land "where 
every child went to school, where almost 
every inhabitant could read and write, 
where even the middle classes were profi- 
cient in mathematics and the classics, and 
could speak two or more languages," if we 
may accept the authority of Motley.^ 

There was no denial there of the liberty 
of the press, and no occasion for a Milton 
to plead for an unlicensed press. The 
right to print subject only to hazard 
and penalty as John Milton carefully de- 
fines it, which England denied, Holland 
granted, and Brewster printed without 
the necessity of first submitting his manu- 
script to either prelate or censor. 

The foremost university of Europe was 
in full view of their simple dwellings in 
Clock Street or Bell Alley. The propriety 
and convenience of a civil marriage cere- 

^ United Netherlands, iv, 432; Campbell, ii, 342. 
84 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

mony they had learnt by actual experi- 
ence in Holland, and its practice by Wins- 
low in New Plymouth was to cost him 
later seventeen weeks' imprisonment in 
the Fleet Prison under the illiberal re- 
quirements of the English law. 

With the advantages of registry in a 
public office of all deeds and mortgages, to 
which has been attributed in part the 
commercial prosperity of the Dutch, they 
were familiar by actual experience in Ley- 
den. They had also observed the use of 
public records in political and religious 
organizations, for in addition to the im- 
portant records for mortgages and trans- 
fer of lands, there were twenty other 
kinds of public records kept in Leyden. 
Besides this indebtedness to the Dutch 
which their life in Holland had brought 
them, there is another fact worthy of no- 
tice, that even in the New World the 
Dutch sagacity and experience were help- 
ful. The use of wampum as a currency 
in trading with the Indian the Pilgrim 
learned from the Dutch at Manliattan. 
85 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

Neither the planters at Plymouth nor the 
English in any other plantation in the 
New World so "much as knew what it 
was until they had knowledge of it from 
the Dutch and much less that it was a 
commodity of worth and value." When 
its use at the trading-posts became estab- 
lished, it proved a current commodity 
which greatly facilitated that Indian 
trade upon which they depended for the 
furs and skins, and upon which they re- 
lied for exports to England. 

But above all and more than all, they 
had found in Holland that *' freedom of 
Religion for all men" which they sought 
and for which they had left their English 
homes. As the slow years passed there 
were many factors which contributed to 
influence the members of the Leyden 
Church to consider seriously the question 
of a removal from Holland and which 
finally determined their policy of migra- 
tion. 

The Treaty of Antwerp, which defined 
the relations between Spain and the 
86 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

Netherlands, provided for a truce of 
twelve years and was soon to expire by 
limitation. The future was dark and un- 
certain. If war were again to break out, 
their situation would be critical and dan- 
gerous, and already there was a beating of 
drums in the streets and the preparations 
for war had begun. The passing years had 
reduced their numbers by death and re- 
moval and few were found to take the 
places of those who had withdrawn their 
membership or died. Some preferred even 
an English prison to liberty in Holland 
with the afflictions which bore heav- 
ily upon them. The aged saw old age 
stealing upon them with no prospect of 
relief from their heavy burdens. The 
young men were becoming soldiers or 
sailors or were drawn into dangerous 
courses, undisciplined and unrestrained 
by family ties, and their habits were be- 
coming corrupt and their character de- 
generate. They longed for the protection 
of the English flag; they were losing the 
English language and the English name, 
87 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

and they missed for their children the 
education which they had received in 
their Enghsh homes. 

"Above all other lands on earth 

They loved the Land that gave them birth. 
Its seagirt coasts, its downs, 
Its hamlets and its towns. 
The green fields where their children played, 
The chm-chyards where their sires were laid. 

"They loved their England, what was best 
In her they loved, but not the rest; 
Her State that made her great 
But not her Church in State." 

And lastly, they "were inspired with a 
great hope and inward zeal," as Bradford 
says, "for the propagation of the Gospel 
in the remote parts of the world, a mighty 
work in which they might be the step- 
ping-stones for those who might follow in 
the paths where they had led." These 
considerations were not only persuasive, 
but conclusive. The Dutch had wel- 
comed them, approved them, and sought 
to persuade them to remain as citizens of 
the Netherlands. "These English," said 
88 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

the magistrates of Leyden, "have Hved 
amongst us now these twelve years, and 
yet we never had any suit or accusation 
against any of them." 

The Dutch made two offers to the mem- 
bers of this Pilgrim Church, one, to re- 
main and settle in the Province of Zea- 
land ; the other, free transportation to the 
Hudson River with cattle and other sup- 
plies for each family. 

The directors of the Netherlands Com- 
pany petitioned the Prince of Orange, in 
February, 1C20, to take under the pro- 
tection of Holland "a certain English 
preacher residing in Leyden who is well 
inclined to proceed thither [New Nether- 
land] to live," and who has assured the 
petitioners that "he has the means of in- 
ducing over 400 families to accompany 
him thither, both out of this country and 
England." The directors also called at- 
tention to the evident policy of England 
to settle the territory in America between 
the fortieth and forty-fifth degrees of lati- 
tude, then claimed by the Dutch as the 
89 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

New Netherland, whose title rested on 
prior discovery and occupation, and de- 
*clared that the Enghsh purpose was to 
dispossess by force the State of the Neth- 
erlands of its right therein. 
. They asked that in view of the im- 
portance of the country that two ships 
should be dispatched to secure it against 
the English and protect the Dutch ships 
already there. That application was re- 
jected by the States General for reasons 
which can only be conjectured, as they 
are not set forth in the reply. 

Then they considered a removal to 
Guiana, alleging that that country was 
rich and fruitful and blessed with a 
perpetual spring where vigorous nature 
brought forth all things in abundance and 
plenty, without any great labor or art of 
man. To that course it was objected that 
even if the country yielded riches its cli- 
m^atic conditions were unsuitable to Eng- 
lishmen, and more serious still was the 
proximity of the jealous Spaniard who 
would not suffer them to live there long. 
90 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

And so Guiana as a place for their planta- 
tion was rejected. 

The attention of the Pilgrims had evi- 
dently been directed to Guiana by reason 
of the voyages of Sir Walter Ralegh in 
1595, the settlement of Captain Ley in 
1605, and the explorations of Sir Thomas 
Roe, Captain William Wliite, and others, 
and particularly the plantation under- 
taken by Captain Robert Harcourt inl609, 
who obtained from Prince Henry a large 
patent "for all that coast called Guiana, 
together with the famous River of Ama- 
zones, to him and his heirs." "And the 
events relative to the New Netherland 
possessions in the Brazils and along the 
coast of Guiana are recorded by several 
historians in the Netherlands." 

In 1617 Sir Walter Ralegh with many 
valiant soldiers and brave gentlemen 
made his last voyage to Guiana, and after 
his return to England he endeavored by 
his best abilities to interest his country 
and state in those fair regions. It is a 
curious fact that the very year in which 
91 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

the Pilgrims sailed for the New World, 
Captain Robert North, with one hundred 
and twenty gentlemen and others, with a 
ship, a pinnace, and two shallops to re- 
main in the country, set sail from Plym- 
outh on the last of April, 1620, and 
within seven weeks after he arrived at 
the Amazon with the loss of only one old 
man. They sailed up the river one hun- 
dred leagues to settle the men, "where 
the sight of the country and people so 
contented them that never men thought 
themselves more happy," as the chronicler 
records it. 

By this process of elimination of possi- 
ble locations for a permanent home, it be- 
came clear that there was no place which 
met so many of their requirements as 
some part of Virginia. The decision hav- 
ing been made where they were to go, the 
next matter for debate was how they 
were to go. Authority and means were 
both necessary. The Crown charter of 
1606 had given to the London Company 
the territorial and governmental rights in 
92 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

the New World between the thirty-fourth 
and forty-first degrees of north latitude, 
and to the Plymouth Company between 
the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth, north 
latitude, and the rights and powers of the 
two companies thereby overlapped in that 
part of the grants between the thirty- 
eighth and forty-first degrees. This inter- 
lapping territory of three degrees included 
that tract of land bounded approximately 
on the coast-hne on the north by the Hud- 
son and on the south by the Potomac. 
Either colony had the right to plant there, 
subject only to the proviso in the charter 
that neither colony should make a planta- 
tion within one hundred miles of a prior 
plantation by the other. 

If, then, the Pilgrims had in the first 
instance secured their patent from the 
second or Plymouth Company, as later 
they did, instead of the first or London 
Company, their landing either south of 
the Hudson, or at Cape Cod or Plymouth/ 
would have been within the territorial 
limits of their patent and there would 
93 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

have been no occasion for the Compact 
and therefore no Compact. 

To secure the assent of the Enghsh 
Government to this adventure, some 
time in 1617 Robinson and Brewster, the 
rehgious leaders of the company and best 
fitted to express the rehgious convictions 
of the members of the church, sent a 
statement caUed the "Seven Articles" to 
England, a copy of which is still preserved 
in the Public Record Office, and which de- 
fines with some minuteness their attitude 
towards the civil and ecclesiastical au- 
thorities. This statement seems to occa- 
sion some embarrassment to the few histo- 
rians who have commented upon it in their 
effort to explain its apparent inconsist- 
ency with the Pilgrims' doctrine and pol- 
icy. It expresses in exact terms their 
assent to the Confession of Faith, the 
Thirty-Nine Articles, and to the authority 
and supremacy of the King in Church or 
State. This is in entire conformity v/ith 
their expressed readiness to take the oath 
of allegiance and supremacy, and a con- 
04 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

trolling factor in their decision to go to 
Virginia was that they might be within 
the limits of the English dominion and 
under an English king. But their ac- 
knowledgment of the authority of the 
present bishops in England, as set forth 
in the 5th Article, where they in terms 
state, "The authority of the present bish- 
ops in the land we do acknowledge so 
far forth as the same is indeed derived 
from His Majesty in them and as they 
proceed in his name," can best be recon- 
ciled with their theory of independency by 
adopting the distinction which they made 
between civil and spiritual authority. 

It was, of course, to be expected that 
they would seek to minimize any differ- 
ences, but the meaning which they gave 
to this recognition of the authority of the 
bishops had already been clearly stated 
by one no less independent than they. 
That distinction had been made in the 
formal confession of faith made in 1619 
by that Independent Church in London, 
which in that year was established by 
95 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

Henry Jacob on his return from Holland. 
That confession in terms states the policy 
of the Independent Congregation as: 
"We believe that we and all true, visible 
churches ought to be overseen and kept 
in good order and peace and ought to be 
governed under Christ both supremely 
and also subordinately by the civil magis- 
trate, yes, in causes of religion when need 
is." Nor did Mr. Robinson deny that es- 
tablished churches were true churches, al- 
though he held that the errors and defects 
of that Church were sufficient to justify 
the formation of separate congregations. 
Thus, he writes: ''I believe with my heart 
before God and profess with my tongue 
before the world, that I have one and the 
same faith, hope, spirit, baptism and Lord 
which I had in the Church of England and 
none other." And as has been before 
stated, it cannot be controverted that the 
influences under which Robinson lived in 
Holland had, as the years went by, con- 
tributed to a wider liberality in his views 
of and relations to that Church, which is 
96 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

well illustrated by the fact, and it should 
not be forgotten, that Lyford, the first 
minister of the Plymouth Church, who 
was sent over by the merchant adven- 
turers, was a Church of England man and 
yet accepted by the congregation without 
protest. Technically the little church 
which first gathered in the common house 
or fort, not only during the first year of 
the colony, but until the Revolution, was 
within the diocese of London as matter of 
law, and that fact was clearly stated in 
that comparatively recent decision by the 
Consistory Court of London upon the ap- 
plication for the return of the Bradford 
manuscript to America, in the opinion of 
the Chancellor, as follows: 

Up to the time of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, New England was for Ecclesiasti- 
cal purposes in the Diocese of London . . . 
and the Bishops Registry being the only Pub- 
lic Registry for the custody of such docu- 
ments (certificates of marriages, births and 
deaths) within the Diocese. 

Through Sir Edwin Sandys (the 
brother of that Sir Samuel Sandys from 
97 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

whom Brewster held the Manor House at 
Scrooby) , who was a member of the Coun- 
cil of the Virginia Company and at some 
time its president and treasurer, they 
secured the cooperation of Sir Robert 
Naunton, the principal Secretary of State 
under King James, in an effort to persuade 
the King to formally permit them to live 
under his protection in America and enjoy 
liberty of conscience. The King asked the 
Secretary what the profits might be of 
such an adventure and the answer was 
"Fishing," to which the King replied, 
**So God have my soul! It is an honest 
trade, it was the Apostles' own calling." 
The King had his joke and showed to his 
satisfaction his learning and his wit, but 
refused to give his formal consent. He 
was ready to connive at them and agree 
not to molest them, but no ofiicial per- 
mission under his seal could issue, and 
they were referred to the Bishop of Lon- 
don and Archbishop of Canterbury. 

They did in this matter the sensible and 
practical thing, and made no application 
98 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

to the ecclesiastical authorities, but con- 
tented themselves with the sane reflection 
that the word of the King was as good as 
the written grant under the royal seal, 
for, as they quaintly and accurately 
stated it, "though they had a seal as 
broad as the house floor, if he changed his 
mind, some way would be found to revoke 
the warrant." 

In the name of John Wincop or Wincob, 
as Bradford spells it, in June, 1619, the 
London Virginia Company granted a pat- 
ent and ordered that the seal should be 
annexed. Wincop, as the Company's 
record shows, intended to go in person to 
Virginia and there to plant himself and 
his associates. Wincop did not go and the 
patent was never used and is not known 
to be in existence. Possibly it was among 
the papers which were taken from the 
Fortune in January, 1622, by the French 
man-of-war and carried to the Isle de 
Dieu at the time when the Marquis de 
Cera, governor of the island, took away the 
goods of the vessel, and especially the let- 
99 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

ter written by William Bradford, contain- 
ing a general relation of matters in Plym- 
outh, the latter a contribution to the his- 
tory of Plymouth of prime importance, 
but all efforts for its recovery have proved 
unavailing. 

The patent having been obtained, their 
efforts were redoubled to secure the neces- 
sary assistance to enable them to prose- 
cute the voyage. For the requisite ships 
and supplies necessary to give any hope 
of success for this plantation the coopera- 
tion of those English merchants who 
might be ready to adventure in an under- 
taking like that proposed was essential. 
The details of the negotiations which the 
Pilgrims conducted through their repre- 
sentatives are not material to this in- 
quiry, but it is important to note that 
the final terms, reluctantly agreed upon, 
made necessary a contract which seemed 
burdensome when made and which be- 
came more burdensome as the months 
went by in their homes along the first 
street in Plymouth. 

100 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

This arrangement between the mer- 
chant adventurers and the Pilgrims is 
sometimes spoken of as a joint-stock 
company, but obviously that was not the 
form which the undertaking took, for 
there was neither a corporation, a seal, 
nor stock. I suppose the error grows from 
the misinterpretation of Bradford's ex- 
pression that they put their money into 
the "common stock." The terms of the 
agreement show a relation more resem- 
bling a partnership and not at all unlike 
the later contracts for the prosecution 
of fishing voyages in New England, by 
which the men who furnished the vessel 
and the main supplies took one share of 
the catch, and the captain and the crew, 
in agreed proportion, the other share. 

Under the arrangement it was provided 
that at the end of seven years the original 
investment and the profits of the adven- 
ture should be equally divided between 
the adventurers and the planters. Each 
planter above the age of sixteen had a 
single share and if he furnished money or 
101 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

provisions to the amount of ten pounds, 
he was to receive two shares, and so on in 
that proportion. If the planter took with 
him his wife or children or servants, he 
was allowed for every person of the age of 
sixteen another share; if there were any 
between ten years of age and sixteen, he 
had a third share; and any child under the 
age of ten had no share in the division but 
was given fifty acres of unmanured land; 
and in addition to that all the planters, 
their wives and children and servants, 
were to have their meat, drink, apparel, 
and provisions out of the common fund. 
If the plantation was unsuccessful, the 
planters lost their time and money in- 
vested; the adventurers lost their invest- 
ment. Its effect was to establish a com- 
munity life in that new land to which they 
went, by reason of which, long before the 
seven years had terminated, there re- 
sulted embarrassments, serious, interest- 
ing, and significant, which must be more 
fully considered in the following lecture. 
The negotiations were completed, the 
102 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

smaller ship, the "Speedwell," was en- 
gaged to transport such members of the 
Ley den Company as were to engage in this 
plantation, from Delfthaven to Southamp- 
ton, where they were to meet the " May- 
flower " with those persons who were not 
members of the church at Ley den, but had 
been induced to leave their English homes 
to join in this adventurous undertaking. 

One other problem waited solution and 
that was to determine who of the Leyden 
Church were to go and who were to re- 
main. Obviously it was impossible for all 
the members of the church to go in the 
ships, and the supplies were inadequate 
even if they had been so inclined. When a 
minority of the members of the church 
decided to go, it was agreed that the pas- 
tor should remain and the elder, Brewster, 
should go as the religious teacher and 
leader. It was further determined that 
those who went should become an "abso- 
lute" or independent church, and those 
who remained should continue the exist- 
ing organization. 

103 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

The date, then, of the organization of 
the first church in Plymouth should prop- 
erly be fixed as in the year 1620, and not 
in the year 1606, when the first members 
of the congregation assembled at Scrooby. 
In accordance with the congregational 
way, it was agreed, if any returned to 
Leyden or if any from Leyden there- 
after went to America, no letters of dis- 
missal or testimonial would be necessary 
to enable them to unite either with the 
church at Leyden or with the church in 
America. 

On August 1, 1620, the Leyden mem- 
bers of the Pilgrim Company sailed on the 
" Speedwell " from Delf thaven for South- 
ampton. 

"And now with lingering long embrace. 
With tears of love and partings fond, 
They floated down the creeping Maas, 
Along the Isle of Ysselmond. 

"They passed the frowning towers of Briel, 
The *Hook of Holland's' shelf of sand 
And grated soon with Hfting keel, 
The sullen shores of fatherland." 

104 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

On the 15th of August, N.S., the " May- 
flower" and " Speedwell" leave Southamp- 
ton Water. Before they had passed out of 
the English Channel they were obliged to re- 
turn to the sheltered harbor of Dartmouth 
for repairs to the " Speedwell." On Sep- 
tember 2 they make a second departure, 
and when they had sailed a hundred leagues 
beyond Land's End, it was discovered 
that the " Speedwell " was leaking so badly 
that her pumps could barely free her. It 
seemed impossible then for the " Speed- 
well " to continue on the voyage and both 
ships were obliged to return. The disaster 
to the " Speedwell " is attributed to the 
deceit of the master and crew who plotted 
the stratagem of her unseaworthy condi- 
tion to relieve themselves of the burden 
of the contract, which required them to 
stay a whole year in the new country. 

Reaching Plymouth, England, it was 
necessary to reorganize the expedition. 
Those who were reluctant to sail re- 
mained, and the "Mayflower," with a 
full complement of crew and passengers, 
105 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

sailed from Plymouth on the 16th of Sep- 
tember, 1620. 

"Then, the sea's wide blue! — 
*They sailed/ writ one, *and as they sailed they 

knew 
That they were Pilgrims/" 

Nearly ten weeks passed before they came 
to anchor on the 21st of November in 
Cape Cod Bay, after a voyage of suffering 
and hardship, and attended with grave 
perils. One hundred and two passengers 
sailed on the " Mayflower " from Plym- 
outh. On the voyage one of the company 
died, and a child, appropriately named 
Oceanus, was born, so that the same 
number of passengers were on board the 
" Mayflower " when she dropped anchor 
in Cape Cod Harbor. 

Not all the passengers of the " Mayflow- 
er" were members of the Ley den Church. 
Only two are known to have lived in 
the little hamlets of Scrooby and Auster- 
field, and many another county than the 
three which Bradford named, Lincolnshire, 
Nottinghamshire, or Yorkshire, had con- 
106 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

tributed to the " Mayflower's " passenger 
list. The efforts of the merchant adven- 
turers or agents, the thirst for adventure, 
and the love of gain had brought together 
in that solitary vessel many a stranger to 
the Ley den leaders. The protracted voy- 
age had been severe and perilous, and 
grave difference, of opinion arose among 
the mariners as to whether it were wiser to 
proceed or to return, as the ship, beaten 
about by fierce storms, ploughed its 
lonely way through the dreary and wind- 
swept Atlantic. Faction appeared; unity 
and concord were endangered. Here are 
mutterings of discontent, and there mu- 
tinous speeches from these strangers on 
board the ship. 

When Cape Cod was sighted it was re- 
solved to tack and stand for the south- 
ward, the wind and weather permitting, 
and to find some place about the Hudson 
River for their permanent habitation. 
But before the day was spent they found 
themselves in grave peril from dangerous 
shoals and roaring breakers. It was then 
107 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

decided to bear up again for the Cape, 
and the next day their frail bark rode in 
safety within the sheltering arms of Cape 
Cod harbor. 

The abandonment of their purpose to 
settle within the limits of their patent led 
to more open and positive declarations 
from the mutineers, that when the voyage 
had ended and a landing effected outside 
of the jurisdiction which their patent con- 
ferred, there would be no authority exist- 
ing to restrain the liberty of any dissatis- 
fied passenger, and it became evident that 
some practical means must be promptly 
adopted to maintain law, order, and dis- 
cipline. So long as they remained on the 
ship the problem was not serious. Not 
only did the master of the ship have the 
right and authority to enforce discipline 
wherever necessary for the security of the 
vessel and the safety of the passengers, 
but also before they had left Southampton 
they had adopted a practical and effective 
organization. 

They had already chosen a governor 
108 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

and assistants to order the people by the 
way and see to the disposing of their pro- 
visions and such hke affairs. Their pur- 
pose and their pohty had been clearly de- 
fined in that striking letter from Robinson 
to the Pilgrim Company, which had been 
received at Southampton before they 
sailed and before they had made choice of 
Carver as the Governor of the "May- 
flower" and Martin of the "Speedwell." 
f Now this letter from the great preacher 
and leader of the Pilgrims from his home 
in Leyden in terms stated that the Pil- 
grim Company were to become in the 
New World a body politic, using amongst 
themselves civil government, and con- 
tained the direction not only that in 
choosing into the office of government 
they should choose such persons as did 
entirely love and promote the common 
good, but also that they should yield unto 
those so chosen "all due honor and obedi- 
ence in their lawful administrations." 
This advice of Robinson was undoubtedly 
in conformity with the authority granted 
109 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

by the formal letters patent issued by the 
Virginia Company in June, 1619, and sent 
to Holland for the consideration of the in- 
tending emigrants, and which defined the 
territorial limits of the proposed settle- 
ment to be south of the mouth of the 
Hudson. 

It was clear that to them had come the 
opportunity and duty of organizing a 
body politic, establishing a civil govern- 
ment, adopting such laws and ordinances 
as to them seemed fit and necessary by 
the consent of the majority, and to be en- 
forced by governors and other officers of 
their voluntary selection. The letter ex- 
pressed the idea of civil liberty which 
Theodore Parker first clearly stated in the 
sentence, " Government of the people, for 
the people, and by the people," and which 
Lincoln made famous. 

The idea, then, which lay at the basis 
of the Mayflower Compact, and which 
poets and painters, speculative historians 
and imaginative orators have assumed 
was first discovered in the cabin of the 
110 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

"Mayflower" after she had reached the 
New World, was in reahty an idea that was 
presented and considered and adopted be- 
fore they had lost sight of the gray walls 
of Southampton, and before the difficulty 
which now confronted them had been 
anticipated. It is true that this idea of 
civil liberty and local self-government 
was the great conception which lay at the 
very basis of their undertaking, but it was 
expressed by Robinson in his letter and 
must have been found in the original 
patent itself. 

The later patents of 1621 and 1629 in 
terms granted to them the right, by con- 
sent of the greater part, to establish such 
laws and ordinances as are for their better 
government, and the same by such officer 
or officers as they shall by most voices 
select and choose to put in execution. 

Having then adopted a polity, its form 
defined in letter and patent, what was the 
obvious thing for a company of sagacious 
Englishmen, wisely led, to do under exist- 
ing conditions.^ Clearly, it seems to me, to 
111 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

make an agreement which shall carry into 
effect the plan, and follow as nearly as 
may be the language of the instrument 
under v/hich they had so far proceeded, 
and by which they agree to be bound by 
such laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, 
and ofBces as shall be thought most meet 
and convenient for the general good of the 
colony, until a new patent could be se- 
cured. 

And so they covenant and combine 
into a civil body politic, and there is not a 
vital word in the Compact which you will 
not find either in the letter of Robinson or 
the patent. And because they had already 
elected a governor by the most voices, 
they make no reference to that require- 
ment in the Compact itself. It was a 
temporary expedient, adapted to and 
forced by the imperious necessities of the 
situation. It was an agreement, not a 
constitution, for a "constitution, in the 
American sense of the word," as Justice 
Miller defines it, "is a written instrument 
by which the fundamental powers of the 
112 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

government are established, limited, and 
defined, and by which these powers are 
distributed among several departments 
for their more safe and useful exercise for 
the benefit of the body politic." If, there- 
fore, they had landed within the limits of 
the first charter, near the mouth of the 
Hudson, and the necessity for the execu- 
tion of the Compact had not arisen, there 
is no reason to suppose that their scheme 
of government, that the form of their 
body politic, or that the laws and ordi- 
nances which they enacted, would have 
been in any respect different, or that they 
would have been governed other than by 
ofiicers and governors of their voluntary 
selection. 

And now that they make their first 
landing in the harbor of Cape Cod, out- 
side of the territorial limits of the patent, 
whose usefulness is at an end, the Com- 
pact to which they subscribe to meet the 
temporary emergency expresses in form 
and substance, in thought and in lan- 
guage, the plan of government set forth in 
113 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

the letter of Robinson and the original 
patent itself. 

In the spring the "Mayflower," but half 
manned, sails away with a Relation of 
their condition and needs. In November, 
1621, the "Fortune" arrives, bringing a 
patent, from the Plymouth Company dif- 
fering mainly from the first patent in its 
territorial grant. From the date of its 
arrival the settlers in the New World 
found in it the clear authority for the 
scheme of government adopted. It grants 
in terms the authority "by consent of the 
greater part of them, to establish such 
laws and ordinances as are for their better 
government, and the same by such officer 
or officers as they shall by most voices 
elect and choose to put in execution." 
The same provision is found in the patent 
granted by Sheffield to Cushman and 
Winslow in January, 1623, for the settle- 
ment of Cape Ann, and also in the Colony 
patent of 1629, granted by the Plymouth 
Company to Bradford and his associates. 

The Compact was not signed by all 
114 



THE PILGRIMS BEFORE PLYMOUTH 

the male passengers, even if we assume 
that the signatures of the fathers made it 
unnecessary for the sons to sign, or that 
the sons were minors and therefore they 
were not asked to sign; there were at 
least seven male servants and the two 
seamen who had been hired for a year, 
whose names do not appear among the 
signers. 

, No new settler upon the soil, no later 
passenger in the vessels which followed in 
the next few years, ever subscribed his 
name to the Compact. With only two ex- 
ceptions, so far as I am advised, there is 
no reference to it in any law or ordinance 
or public or official action of the Plymouth 
Colony at any period of its history. These 
references are in the recital of reasons for 
making laws in the Revision of the Laws 
in 1636 and in the "forme to be placed 
before the records of the severall inheri- 
tances," etc., in the same year. The Com- 
pact will always be held in grateful re- 
membrance and high honor by future 
generations — 

115 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GREVIS 

"Till the waves in the Bay where the Mayflower 
lay, 
Shall foam and freeze no more.'* 

It is the first state paper in the New 
World to express and typify and symbol- 
ize the high conception, the inspiring idea, 
of civil liberty, of self-government, of a 
true democracy. The vision which they 
dimly saw is realized, the dream fulfilled. 

"They did the work they had to do, 
They builded better than they knew. 
So must the few whom fate 
Selects to found a State. 

"They founded theirs with psalms and prayers; 
What sounder state could be than theirs. 
The first since time began 
Of faith in God and Man?" 



Ill 

PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

In the former lectures I have considered 
some of the poUtical, geographical, and 
legal conditions which determined the 
settlement at Plymouth, and some of the 
economic, social, and religious influences 
which directed and shaped the Pilgrim 
migration from England and Holland to 
the New World. 

I propose now to consider mainly those 
incidents in Pilgrim history which are of 
special interest, it seems to me, in the Pil- 
grim story and may have their uses in the 
consideration of the present problems and 
perhaps serve to illustrate in what par- 
ticulars the lives and examples of the Pil- 
grims have contributed in shaping the 
American polity. 

- As has been stated, the " Mayflower " ar- 
rived in Cape Cod harbor on the 21st of 
November, 1620, and the landing at Plym- 
117 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

outh of the shallop's company was ex- 
actly one month later, namely, the 21st of 
December. Between those dates exploring 
parties from the "Mayflower" had made 
their expeditions within the limits of Cape 
Cod and engaged in unimportant and 
bloodless encounters with the Indian tribe 
of the Cape. 

On the 16th of December the shallop 
was dispatched for the purpose of coasting 
the shore of Cape Cod Bay. In that shal- 
lop there sailed ten of the principal men, 
which number included Standish and the 
three who were later to serve as governors 
of the colony during the first generation 
after the landing — Carver, Bradford, 
and Winslow. With them went the two 
seamen hired by the Mayflower Com- 
pany, and of the ship's company two mas- 
ter mates, a master gunner, and three 
sailors. It was a distinctively representa- 
tive company. The ten passengers of the 
''Mayflower" who went on this expedi- 
tion were all signers of the Compact. They 
coasted along the interior line of the bay, 
118 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

discovering no place adapted for a harbor, 
and therefore decided to proceed to the 
place which the pilot, one of the master 
mates by the name of Coppin, assured 
them was a good harbor and which they 
would be likely to reach before nightfall. 

The snow and rain, the increasing wind 
and the roughness of the sea, made the ex- 
pedition one of peril. In a heavy sea their 
mast broke and was carried away, and 
they were obliged to take to their oars. In 
the rain and darkness of the December 
night they succeeded in getting under the 
lee of a small island and remained there 
that night in safety. 

The next day was Sunday. The morn- 
ing dawned fair. In the warmth of the 
December's sun they dried their clothes, 
rested themselves, and gave thanks to 
God for His mercies in their manifold de- 
liverances. 

On Monday, the 21st of December, 
they sounded the harbor which had wel- 
comed Champlain and Block and Smith 
before the Pilgrims' arrival, and then, 
119 



PLYIMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

landing upon the shore and marching in 
to the land, found the abandoned corn- 
fields and the fresh running brooks. It is 
the landing of the shallop's company on 
the 21st of December, 1620, which has 
passed into history as the Landing of the 
Pilgrims. 

For the preservation of the Rock and 
its identification as the spot which the 
Pilgrim feet first pressed as they landed 
on the shore which was to be their perma- 
nent home, we are indebted to the last 
ruling elder of the Plymouth Church, 
Elder Thomas Faunce, clarum et venerabile 
nomen in the annals of Plymouth, who, 
one hundred and twenty years later 
(1741), standing beside the Rock in the 
presence of many witnesses, preserved it 
from being buried beneath a wharf then in 
process of construction, and told the story 
of the Landing as it had been told to him 
by the Pilgrims. He was Elder of the 
First Church for nearly half a century, 
from 1699 to 1746, and for nearly forty 
years, from 1685 to 1723, the Town 
120 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

Clerk. Born in 1647 he had Hved in the 
Kfetime of four members of the shallop's 
company, a boy of nine years when Stand - 
ish died, of ten years when Bradford died, 
and a man of twenty-six years when John 
Rowland died, and these landed from the 
shallop on December 21, 1620. He was 
forty years old when John Alden died. 
He had known twenty-three of the May- 
flower passengers, his mother was the sis- 
ter of Nathaniel Morton, historian and 
Secretary of the Colony; one sister mar- 
ried the son of Richard Warren; another 
sister, the son of Edward Dotey; and a 
third sister, the son of John Robinson. Is 
there any valid reason, then, to doubt the 
story which comes from the lips of one 
whose high character, oflficial position, 
and unequaled opportunities to learn the 
fact which he testifies, compel our respect 
and justify our confidence? 
' With the news that they had selected 
this place to plant the feeble settlement, 
they returned to Cape Cod, and on the 
26th of December, 1620, the " Mayflower," 
121 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

with torn sails, broken timbers, and bat- 
tered hull, came to anchor in the harbor 
of Plymouth. Nine days later they began 
the erection on Leyden Street of their 
first house, which was to be the common 
house for them and their supplies. 

At the time of the arrival, according to 
the letter from John White of the Massa- 
chusetts Colony, written ten years later, 
there was about one foot of snow on the 
ground, and the weather of the winter 
months that followed is reported gener- 
ally to have been mild but wet. 

Of the one hundred and two passengers 
who were on board the "Mayflower" at 
the date of the signing of the Compact 
in Cape Cod harbor, twenty-nine were 
women and girls. The birth of Peregrine 
White, the first English child born in New 
England, increased the number to one hun- 
dred and three. While the '* Mayflower" 
lay in Cape Cod harbor four of the passen- 
gers died, leaving ninety -nine in all from 
the oldest to the youngest to go forward 
with this perilous and uncertain adven- 
122 



\ 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

ture. The total number of survivors at 
the end of the first year was fifty-one. 
More than half of the company then had 
died between the signing of the Compact 
and the arrival of the "Fortune" in No- 
vember, 1621 . Of that number forty-seven 
had died before the " Mayflower " sailed on 
its return voyage in April, 1621. Of the 
forty-one signers of the Compact, twenty- 
one had perished. Of the eighteen wives 
and mothers only four survived the hard- 
ships of the first year. 

"I saw in the naked forest 
Our scattered remnant cast, 
A screen of shivering branches 
Between them and the blast. 
The snow was f alHng romid them. 
The dying fell as fast, 
I looked to see them perish 
When lo, the vision passed." 

In the last analysis the descendants of the 
Mayflower Company to-day must trace 
their descent through different lines to one 
or more of twenty -two of the male pas- 
sengers of the " Mayflower." 

On the 15th of April, 1621, the *'May- 
123 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

flower," after lying one hundred and ten 
days in the harbor and losing nearly half 
of her officers and crew by disease, sails on 
her return voyage to England, leaving the 
survivors of the Pilgrim Company behind, 
"alone with their dead." There v/as no 
general landing of the Pilgrims; many of 
the company had remained on board the 
"Mayflower" during the winter, and it 
was not until March 31 that the ship's car- 
penter was able to fit the shallop "to fetch 
all from aboard." 

The picture of the return of the " May- 
flower " from the New World is a more sug- 
gestive and striking picture even than the 
departure of the "Mayflower" from the 
Old World. Inspired by faith and cheered 
by the hope of happier days and greater op- 
portunities in the New World, the May- 
flower Company had sailed. Now, with 
half their number gone, what but faith 
remained.^ The precedent of earlier expe- 
ditions, where the mortality had been less 
and the survivors included no women and 
children in the list, would seem to have 
124 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

fully justified the return of some of the 
little company which watched from the 
shore the white sail of the " Mayflower" as 
it disappeared beyond the horizon, "as an 
angel's wing through an opening cloud is 
seen and then withdrawn." 

A situation more discouraging could 
hardly be conceived. Their connections 
with the Old World were severed. The 
most that could be hoped was that before 
another winter some vessel might arrive, 
bringing new additions to their number 
and supplies which might enable them to 
overcome the difficulties which surrounded 
them. But whether the hoped-for vessel 
would appear depended not only upon the 
perils of the seas, but upon the ability of 
the adventurers to furnish and equip an- 
other ship, and whether also there could 
be found in England or Holland other Pil- 
grims to attempt the desperate undertak- 
ing, in view of the record of the past 
months. To a degree which can scarcely 
be overestimated, then, the future of the 
New World depended upon the indomita- 
125 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

ble courage and fortitude and faith of 
these fifty men, women, and children, a 
company not larger than that number 
which Dermer, the last voyager to the 
shores, had stated to be the least number 
necessary to a successful settlement. 

If one were seeking to best illustrate the 
Pilgrim spirit, or what perhaps may be 
termed as the Pilgrim quality, he would 
find it in the fact that, undaunted by the 
sufferings and losses of the winter, undis- 
mayed by the thought of perils which 
awaited them in the future, with slight 
grounds for confidence in the final issue, 
facing pestilence and famine and an In- 
dian foe, uncertain which of the three 
were most to be feared, they stand upon 
that hill overlooking the sea where their 
dead rested in unmarked graves, an ex- 
ample to all ages of an heroic devotion to 
duty as they saw it and of a faith which 
could overcome all obstacles. 

Such, then, is one of the lessons of the 
Pilgrim story, and one of the examples 
which the Pilgrims have left to a nation 
126 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

which counts them among its founders. 
It was Sir Francis Bacon who said, "As in 
the Arts and Sciences, the first founda- 
tion is of more consequence than all the 
improvements afterwards, so in king- 
doms, the first foundation or plantation 
is of more noble dignity and merit than 
all that foUoweth." A scene like that 
which marked the " Mayflower's " depart- 
ure makes still more clear the meaning 
of those wise and fine lines. 

The climatic and economic conditions 
of the first years of the Pilgrim Company 
at Plymouth have been preserved not only 
in the writings of Bradford, but in the re- 
ports of careful and competent observers 
who visited Plymouth in the early years 
and noted their observations, and the 
points of view of these different writers 
naturally result in laying emphasis upon 
the conditions which appealed to each the 
most forcibly. For example, Cushman, 
the lay preacher, simply describes the 
general conditions as he found them in 
1621, "We have here great peace, plenty 
127 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

of the Gospel, and many sweet delights 
and varietie of comforts." WiUiam Hil- 
ton, who was one of the passengers in the 
"Fortune," in the letter first printed in 
Smith's "New England's Trials," de- 
scribes the country as "Very pleasant and 
temperate. Great store of fruits and 
vines in great abundance." The woods 
are full of game; the lake and sea abound 
in fish, but for him the persuasive argu- 
ment for emigration is, "We are all free 
holders. The rent day doth not trouble 
us!" Evidently having in his mind the 
contrast between this new land and Eng- 
land, as Cushman describes it in his 
"Reasons and Considerations," touching 
the lawfulness of removing out of England 
into parts of America: 

In England the hospitals are full of the 
ancient. . . . And the alms houses are filled 
with old laborers. Many there are who get 
their living with bearing burdens, but more 
are fain to burden the land with their whole 
bodies. Multitudes get their means of life 
by prating, and so do numbers more by 
begging. 

128 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

John Pory, who had been Secretary for 
Virginia, on his return voyage from Vir- 
ginia to England in 1622 in the ship " Dis- 
covery" (Thomas Jones, master) stopped 
at Plymouth for a brief visit. We have 
the good fortune to have preserved in the 
John Carter Brown Library a manuscript 
copy of his letter to the Earl of Southamp- 
ton, giving an interesting and graphic pic- 
ture of that visit to Plymouth. He writes: 

Such is the wholesomeness of the place, the 
Governor told me that for the space of one 
whole year of the two wherein they had been 
there, died not one man, woman or child. 
The healthfulness is accompanied with much 
plenty, both of fish and fowl every day in the 
year, as I know no place in the world can 
match it. He gives as the reason for this 
plenty the continual tranquility of the place, 
being guarded on all sides from the fury of the 
storms, as also the abundance of fish at low 
water, the bottom of the bay then appearing 
as a green meadow and lastly, the number of 
freshets (brooks) running into the bay, where 
they may refresh their thirst. 

And then proceeds: 

Now as concerning the quality of the peo- 
129 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

pie. How happy were it for our people in the 
southern colony if they were as free from 
wickedness and vice as these are in this place. 

Pory describes their fortifications and 

pays tribute to their industry, in that they 

have erected 

a substantial pallisado of ^700 feet in com- 
pass, stronger than I have seen in Virginia, 
and lastly, by a blockhouse which they have 
erected in the highest part of the town to 
mount their ordnance upon, from whence 
they command all the harbor. 

While John Smith, a more trained ob- 
server, writing in 1624, says: 

At Plymouth there is about 180 persons, 
some cattle and goats, but many swine and 
poultry, 32 dwelling houses whereof 7 were 
burned the last winter, and the value of 500 
pounds in other goods. The town is empaled 
about an half a mile in compass. In the town, 
upon a high mount, they have a fort, well 
built with wood, loam and stone, where is 
planted their ordnance. Also a fair watch- 
tower, partly framed for the sentinel. The 
place it seems is healthful for the last three 
years, notwithstanding the great want of 
most necessaries, there having not one died of 
the first planters. 

130 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

And De Rasieres, having been sent on 
an embassy from New Amsterdam to the 
Plymouth colony in 1627, in a letter to 
one of the directors of the Dutch West 
India Company, describes in detail the 
careful preparations which had been made 
against hostile attack by sea or land, but 
also notes that the Pilgrims give the In- 
dian tribes an "example of better ordi- 
nances and a better life" than the Dutch 
give at Manhattan. 

One lesson which the example of the 
Pilgrims teaches is the lesson of adequate 
military preparation for the safety of the 
state as well as of the little town. Pory 
was impressed with the extraordinary in- 
dustry which the Pilgrims displayed in the 
construction of their military works, and 
when one considers how few the number 
of workers in the early years of the colony 
and how difficult the construction of so ex- 
tensive works when the facilities available 
were quite inadequate, one is impressed 
with the importance which they gave to 
this problem of preparation. 
131 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRBIS 

As early as 1622 a fort was built on 
Burial Hill, of stout timber with a flat 
roof and battlements on which their ord- 
nance was mounted and where they kept 
constant watch. As Secretary Morton 
says, "It was a great work for them to 
do in their weakness and in times of want, 
but the danger of the time required it." 
Not only was a fort built, but the town 
was empaled, including the top of the hill, 
and with four bulwarks or jetties, from 
which the whole town could be defended, 
and in three of which were gates. The ex- 
tent of this palisade was twenty-seven 
hundred feet as Smith describes it. 

Wlien De Rasieres arrived in 1627 the 
construction work had been very much 
extended. The houses were built of hewn 
planks and the gardens enclosed by 
planks, so that both the houses and court- 
yards are arranged in good order. In ad- 
dition to that, there was a stockade 
against sudden attacks, and at the ends of 
the street were the three wooden gates. 
On the cross-street, in the center of the 
132 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

palisade, was the Governor's house "be- 
fore which there was a square en- 
closure upon which four pedereros* are 
mounted," so as to flank the streets. 
Then on the hill is the large square house 
used both as a fort and a meeting-house, 
with flat roof, made of thick planks, 
studded with oak beams on the top of 
which are mounted six cannon which 
carry balls of from four to five pounds, 
and command the surrounding country. 
The cannon command the street and the 
ford over the brook. The fort stood upon 
the military crest of the hill, as it is 
termed, and above it on the very top of 
the hiU was placed the watch-tower, from 
which a view could be had of the entire 
country, and where later a beacon in case 
of Indian attack was lighted. 

When they meet for service on Sundays 
or holidays "they assemble by beat of 
drum, each with his musket or firelock, in 
front of the captain's door." Then in or- 
der, three abreast, led by a sergeant with- 
out drum-beat, they march up the hill to 
133 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

the fort. Behind comes the Governor, on 
his right hand the preacher with his cloak, 
and on his left hand the captain with his 
side arms. And so they march in good 
order and each sets his arms down near 
him. Thus they are constantly on their 
guard, night and day. Above the fort 
floats the English flag. Every able-bodied 
citizen is trained in the use of arms, and in 
case of sudden alarm, his post is assigned 
him. In time of public danger, under the 
Act of 1675 it was ordered that whoever 
shall shoot off a gun on any unnecessary 
occasion, or at any game, except an In- 
dian or a wolf, shall forfeit five shillings. 
The fort was several times repaired and 
enlarged, and finally, just before King 
Philip's War, was rebuilt. It formed a 
square one hundred feet on each side with 
palisades ten and one half feet high, large 
enough to receive, if necessary, all the 
citizens in case of attack. There was no 
danger of a shortage of water, for a flow- 
ing spring was located within the enclo- 
sure on the slope of the hill. 
134 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

It is an interesting fact that no hostile 
shot was ever fired from the guns upon 
the fort. Occasionally an alarm gun 
sounded, but no attack was ever made 
upon the homes enclosed within the pali- 
sade, nor was any attack ever made by 
the Indians upon the homes within the 
limits of the town of Plymouth until in 
King Philip's War a few houses were de- 
stroyed in the village of Chiltonville. 

But the thoroughness of the prepara- 
tion, the care given to every detail of de- 
fense, the compulsory training in the use 
of military arms, the requirement of the 
law under which it was necessary for each 
citizen to equip himself with musket and 
ammunition, and the fact that nothing 
was omitted which would tend to secure 
the safety of the infant colony during all 
those years, is a sufficient explanation, if 
any were needed, why they escaped the 
perils of Indian attack. Both treaty and 
preparedness they found were necessary 
for security against the horrors of war 
and for the maintenance of an enduring 
135 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

peace, and "useless each without the 
other." 

There are two pohtical and legal instru- 
ments which measurably shaped and 
directed the development of the Pilgrim 
movement, and which in some important 
respects may be regarded as marking the 
technical beginning and close of the inde- 
pendency of town and colony. 

First, the Bradford patent of 1629, and 
secondly, the New England Confederacy 
of 1643. The Pilgrim story, as related by 
historian and annalist, is mainly the rec- 
ord of the lives and labors of individuals, 
the details of municipal action, the estab- 
lishment of little centers of church and 
corporate life, the relations of the early 
settlers with the Indian tribes in the im- 
mediate neighborhood, or with the new 
settlements of later emigrants in planta- 
tions somewhat remote from Plymouth. 
These two incidents stand out somewhat 
apart in their significance, operation, and 
eflfect. 

136 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

The Bradford Patent 
Prior to the issue of the patent from the 
president and council for New England to 
Bradford and his associates, dated Janu- 
ary 13, 1629, the entries in the Colony 
Records relate mainly to transfers of land 
and shares in cattle, the only important 
general legislation being the court order 
of December 17, 1623, providing for a jury 
trial in civil and criminal matters; the 
order of the 29th of May, 1625, prohibit- 
ing the sale or transport of planks, boards, 
or frames for houses and vessels, which 
may tend to the destruction of timber, 
without the consent of the Governor and 
Council; and the orders relating to trans- 
portation of corn, beans, or peas without 
the colony, and providing that no handi- 
craftsmen should use their trade for any 
strangers or foreigners till the necessity of 
the colony be served. 

The Bradford patent recites that Brad- 
ford and his associates have for nine years 
lived in New England and have inhabited 
137 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

and planted a town called by the name of 
"New Plymouth," and "by the special 
providence of God and their extraordinary 
care and industry, they have increased 
their plantation to near 300 people and 
are upon all occasions able to relieve any 
new planters or others. His Majesty's 
subjects, who may fall upon that coast." 

The territorial limits of the tract 
granted by the patent includes substan- 
tially all of Plymouth County and all of 
Bristol and Barnstable Counties and the 
towns of Bristol, Warren, Barrington, 
Little Compton, and Tiverton in Rhode 
Island, and further includes a grant of 
fifteen miles on each side of the Kennebec 
River, on which was the Pilgrim trading- 
post for trade with the Indians. It is a 
grant to- Bradford, his heirs and assigns, 
subject to a rental to the King of one fifth 
of the gold and silver within the territory 
and one fifth thereof to the President and 
Council. It provides and authorizes an 
incorporation of the inhabitants, with 
liberty "to frame and make orders, ordi- 
138 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

nances and constitutions," for the better 
government of their affairs here and also 
in New England, and that the same may 
be put in execution by such officers and 
ministers as he or they shall authorize and 
depute, provided that such laws and or- 
ders be not repugnant to the laws of Eng- 
land or to the frame of government by the 
President and Council to be hereafter 
established. 

In March, 1641, Governor Bradford 
surrenders ''into the hands of the whole 
Court, consisting of the free men of this 
corporation of New Plymouth, all the 
right and title, power, authoritie, privi- 
leges, immunities and freedoms granted 
in the said letters patent," with some 
small reservations for the benefit of the 
old planters. 

The memorandum upon the instru- 
ment shows that this surrender was made 
by Bradford in public court to Nathaniel 
Sowther, then Secretary of the colony, 
who was especially authorized by the 
Court to receive the same, together with 
139 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

the letters patent in the name and for the 
use of the whole body of freemen. The 
General Court was composed of all the 
freemen of the colony; they chose the ojQS- 
cers of the government, made the laws, 
and the first list of freemen, under date of 
1633, includes sixty-eight names. This 
was the body politic of the Plymouth 
Colony. 

The officers were a Governor and seven 
assistants. There was no deputy governor 
until 1636, when the Governor was au- 
thorized to appoint one of the assistants 
to govern during his absence, and not till 
1679 was a deputy governor actually 
chosen. 

This Bradford patent of 1629 uses the 
words "Town of New Plymouth," and is 
the earliest reference to Plymouth as a 
town. In the Colony laws of 1632 Plym- 
outh is referred to as a town, but the first 
entry in the Town Records which bears 
any date, the prior entries relating only 
to the earmarks of the cattle, is March, 
1637, and the first record of a meeting of 
140 



PLYMOUTH AND TIIE PILGRIMS 

the townsmen of New Plymouth at which 
" all the inhabitants from Jones River 
to the Eele River were present" was in 
July, 1638, to consider the disposition 
of the stock given by James Sherley, a 
London merchant, to the "poore" of 
Plymouth. 

Under the Provincial laws it was pro- 
vided, in 1775, that "Every incorporated 
district shall henceforth be and shall be 
holden, taken and intended to be a town 
to all intents and purposes," and under 
the Acts of 1785 it was provided that 
"The inhabitants of every town within 
this government are hereby declared to be 
a body politic and corporate." 

The fact is that, as the Supreme Court 
later held,^ "Towns become in effect mu- 
nicipal or quasi-corporations without any 
formal act of incorporation." Thus the 
date of the establishment of Duxbury is 
given as 1637, of Hingham as 1635, of Hull 
as 1644, of Marshfield as 1642, and of 
Bridgewater as 1656. The immediate ef- 

1 122 Mass. p. 349. 
141 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

feet of the patent was firmly to establish 
the colony on a more secure and more 
clearly defined foundation and to create 
a well-regulated body politic and permit 
a better-organized form of government 
than had before been practical. 

The second event was the establish- 
ment, in 1643, fourteen years later, of the 
New England Confederacy, the union of 
the four larger colonies, far-reaching in its 
operation and results. 

The New England Confederacy 
By 1643 the population of New England 
had increased to more than twenty thou- 
sand persons, and some three hundred 
ships carrying four thousand families had 
come over from England and Holland to 
the New World. The Massachusetts Bay 
Colony, lying immediately north of the 
Plymouth Colony, had been founded in 
1629. To the south and west of Massa- 
chusetts were the colonies of Connecticut 
and New Haven. In addition to these 
four colonies were two other modest cen- 
142 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

ters of English population, Providence 
and Rhode Island. And north and north- 
east of Massachusetts in that then distant 
territory, now divided into the States of 
Maine and New Hampshire, were the 
little independent settlements of Dover, 
Exeter, and others. But the important 
colonies in numbers and wealth were the 
four colonies above mentioned, Plymouth, 
Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and 
New Haven. 

A combination among those colonies 
was proposed in order to prevent a gen- 
eral conspiracy of the Indians against the 
English in all parts and to furnish the 
necessary means to secure the protection 
of the settlers. Two delegates from each 
of the four colonies met at Boston to pre- 
pare the articles of confederation, "the 
model and prototype," says John Quincy 
Adams, ''of the North American Confed- 
eracy of 1774." 

They agree that the name shall hence- 
forth be the "United Colonies of New 
England." In the event of peril each col- 
143 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

ony was to send its quota of men, suffi- 
ciently armed and provided for the service 
in the proportion at first of one hundred 
men as Massachusetts's share and from 
each of the other three colonies forty-five 
men. 

• For managing the affairs of the whole 
confederation two commissioners from 
each jurisdiction were chosen with full 
power from their several general courts to 
determine the affairs of war and peace, 
the number of men for war, the division of 
supplies and all things "which are proper 
concomitants or consequences of such a 
confederation, for amitie, offence and de- 
fence; not intermeddling with the gov- 
ernmente of any of the jurisdictions." 

By the eighth article of the combina- 
tion it was agreed that the commissioners 
should endeavor to "frame and establish 
agreements and orders in general cases of 
a civil nature, ... for the preservation of 
peace among themselves and preventing 
as much as may be all occasions of war or 
difference with others," and provision was 
144 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

made for the extradition of fugitive serv- 
ants or prisoners from one colony to the 
others. A similar provision is found in the 
Constitution of the United States/ later 
superseded by the Thirteenth Amend- 
ment. 

On the 7th of September, 1643, the 
General Court of Plymouth, having ap- 
proved the combination, it was ratified in 
its behalf by its representatives, Winslow 
and Collier, and thereafter the confedera- 
tion in form and substance continued un- 
til 1686, at which time Sir Edmund Andros 
appeared with his commission from James 
II as Governor of all New England. 

From the date of the organization of the 
confederacy, Plymouth's influence in the 
important questions of peace and war was 
limited by the authority vested by the 
combination in the other colonies of the 
confederacy. By the year 1644 the popu- 
lation of the town of Plymouth had been 
reduced to the estimated number of one 
hundred and fifty. The more fertile soil, 

1 Art. IV, Sec. 2. 
145 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

the greater opportunities for trade which 
the estabhshment of settlements from 
New Hampshire to Connecticut per- 
mitted, had been a stimulus to emigration 
from Plymouth, and had checked the 
growth of that settlement. Meetings and 
conferences were held as to the desirabil- 
ity of the removal of the church to some 
other fit place which might more conven- 
iently and comfortably receive the whole 
"with such others as might come to 
them." 

It was first determined to remove to a 
place called "Nauset," which was incor- 
porated in 1646, and its name changed to 
"Eastham" in 1651. But further investi- 
gation showed that that place was remote 
and not competent to receive the whole 
body of the church. But many who re- 
solved upon removal took advantage of 
the agreement and moved away, and as 
Bradford quaintly puts it: 

Thus was this poor church left like an an- 
cient mother, grown old and forgotten of her 
children, though not in their affections yet in 

146 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

regard of their bodily presence and personal 
helpfulness. Her ancient members being 
most of them worn away by death and those 
of later times being like children, translated 
into other families, and she, like a widow, left 
only to trust in God. Thus she that had made 
many rich became herself poor. 

The establishment of the New England 
Confederacy, the division of the ancient 
church, the loss of population and wealth 
in the town of Plymouth, marks the close 
of the important influence which Plym- 
outh and the Pilgrim had in other years 
exerted in the affairs of New England. 
But no story would be complete or ade- 
quate which failed to refer to some inci- 
dents, well worth remembering, which 
illustrate the Pilgrim idea and policy and 
teach their helpful lesson in the considera- 
tion of some of the problems of the present 
day. 

The real use of history is not limited to 
a mere recital of past events without 
reference to their connection with, or in- 
fluence upon, the present. We are all 
more interested in the present and the 
147 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

immediate future than in the past; "that 
at least is secure." 

History is the recital of past experience 
of individuals and nations, and there is no 
way of judging of the future but by the past 
and that which the past has revealed to us. 

I ask your attention to some considera- 
tion of the effect of the Pilgrims' lives and 
labors, and of the lessons which may be 
learned from their policy and example. 

Upon the stately gate of the great 
World's Exposition at Chicago, was in- 
scribed the impressive line: 

Toleration in Religion the best fruit of the last 
four centuries. 

That was America's verdict of the value 
of that gift to humanity and civilization 
which those centuries have brought. The 
same hand which wrote the inscription in 
Chicago drafted the inscription upon the 
window of the church at Plymouth: 

Religious Liberty, the fruit of Pilgrim sowing. 

These fine phrases by President Eliot fe- 
licitously express the thought that the re- 
148 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

ligious liberty and toleration which those 
centuries have made possible were the 
Pilgrim ideals. 

It is true that in practice or in precept 
the fullest expression of that ideal cannot 
be found within the limits of the Plym- 
outh Colony. Roger Williams carried 
the doctrine of absolute toleration to its 
logical conclusion and justified a broader 
liberty than many a Pilgrim leader was 
ready to accept. But the recognition of 
this principle of toleration, even if not 
pressed to its logical extreme, is their leg- 
acy to a nation. The full development of 
the idea into a principle of law and prac- 
tice came as a result of years of effort and 
thought and study, but is a necessary re- 
sult of the Pilgrim example. 

When in other colonies for a time re- 
ligious leaders taught, as did Mather, that 
"Anti Christ has not a more probable 
way to advance his kingdom of darkness 
than by a toleration of all religions," and 
civil governors held with Governor Dud- 
ley in Massachusetts Bay that *'It was 
149 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

the duty of men of God in courts and 
churches 

"To watch 
O'er such as do a toleration hatch, 
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice 
To poison all with heresee and vice" 

— a Httle candle hghted at Plymouth 
burned brightly through the darkness and 
the gloom. The constitution of the great 
States and greater Union, of which they 
laid the corner-stone, now expresses that 
fundamental principle of the right of in- 
dividual judgment in matters of con- 
science and of the duty of the State to 
recognize and enforce that right whenever 
challenged, and this principle and duty is 
the necessary result of the practical de- 
velopment and application of the Pilgrim 
faith. 

i The example of the Pilgrim Church and 
the teachings of Dr. Fuller, who not only 
practiced medicine, but also taught the 
congregational polity of the Plymouth 
church when he visited the early settle- 
ments in the Massachusetts Bay, were 
150 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PHLGRIMS 

contributing, if not controlling, factors in 
the establishment of the independent 
churches in the Bay Colony and later fol- 
lowed in the plantations in Connecticut 
and New Haven. 

Church government as well as town 
government was necessarily affected by 
local conditions and environment. It was 
the natural form of government in those 
little communities and which necessity 
seemed to compel as best adapted to meet 
the present requirements and everyday 
needs. In the election and ordination by 
each congregation of its own minister, in 
the adoption by each congregation of a 
separate and distinct covenant, though 
bearing a close resemblance to each other, 
and in the order of public worship the 
other churches of these early New Eng- 
land settlements followed the Plymouth 
form of Independency. "Into this Con- 
gregationalism," says Dr. Walker, the 
Plymouth physician, Dr. Fuller was "more 
than any other man the means of trans- 
forming New England Puritanism." 
151 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

The influence of Plymouth in this result 
was early recognized, and is supported by 
contemporaneous authorities and is a mat- 
ter, therefore, of historic record and not of 
conjecture merely. 

Congregationalism finds its earliest ex- 
ponent in New England in that first 
meeting-house on the slope of Burial Hill. 

At the basis of that first foundation or 
plantation here, lay the great ideal that 
their migration was a transplanting of the 
family and the home and not merely of 
individuals, as had been the case in former 
expeditions to the New World. The unit 
of the Pilgrim Company was the family. 
As they gathered on the Mayflower's 
deck, the members of each family stand 
side by side; when the allotment of lands 
was first made in Plymouth, it was an 
allotment to designated families. Home 
and family, then, were central ideas, pri- 
mary units of the Pilgrim Company. The 
English word "home" has no exact 
equivalent in any other language; it has 
152 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

no synonym in ours. No short phrase ex- 
presses its full meaning. It conveys not 
merely the idea of residence, but of per- 
manence; the idea not merely of a place 
for the collection of its comforts and neces- 
sities which supply the present needs of the 
members of the home, but also the attach- 
ments, the memories, the associations of 
the past and the hopes for the future. 

The expeditions to New England in 
former years were composed of men only, 
sailors, soldiers, explorers, gallant and ad- 
venturous, fit types of the proud race 
from which they sprung. They sail in 
search of fame and fortune, inspired by 
the hope that when these were won, they 
would return with full hands to the old 
homes which they were leaving behind. 
Now the Pilgrim Company was animated 
by no such hope. They knew that there 
was no alternative save victory or death. 
To the Pilgrims the presence of the women 
and children on the " Mayflower," tossed 
about by the boisterous waves of the 
stormy Atlantic, and their presence on 
153 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

the Plymouth hills and shore in that 
gloomy winter when half the Pilgrim 
Company perished "before the pestilence 
that walketh in darkness and the destruc- 
tion that wasteth at noonday," was an 
appeal more persuasive and tender and 
inspiring than any other to lead them to 
the highest achievements of courage, 
fortitude, and faith. 

This fact, that the civil polity which 
they founded had as its central idea the 
family life and home, that the responsi- 
bilities which they assumed, the obli- 
gations and the burdens which rested 
heavily upon them, depended principally 
upon the relation of the individual Pil- 
grim to the family which he loved and to 
which he owed allegiance and loyalty, 
was the significant and important differ- 
ence which marks the Pilgrim migration 
from those which had preceded it. This 
fundamental idea of the home or family as 
the unit in the State has been of far- 
reaching influence in the development of 
New England. 

154 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

It is true that the suffrage was a man- 
hood suffrage, quahfied, Hmited, re- 
stricted, but widening as the years went 
by. It is not to be forgotten, however, 
that this suffrage was also a representa- 
tive suffrage in which the householder had 
and exercised the right. There is a fa- 
miliar passage from an English orator, 
based upon a judicial opinion of Sir Ed- 
ward Coke: 

The poorest man may in his cottage bid de- 
fiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may 
be frail; its roof may shake; the wind may 
blow through it and the storms may enter, 
the rain may enter, but the King of England 
cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the 
threshold of the ruined tenement. 

That passage admirably expresses that 
central idea of the part which the home 
played in the community life when legis- 
lation was solely directed to its security 
and protection, and to its freedom from 
unreasonable and illegal search. In the 
changing conditions of the present that 
earlier idea is losing ground. If it be true 
that new occasions teach new duties, it is 
155 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

no less true that time does not always 
make ancient good uncouth. The empha- 
sis which is now laid upon some modern 
theories of government, under the opera- 
tion of which the idea of representation 
fades, and the policy is established that 
the husband and father shall no longer 
represent the wife or daughter or home, is 
likely to bring in its train enduring re- 
sults whose effect and character cannot 
now be foreseen. 

I have no intention of entering into the 
vexed question which that last sentence 
perhaps suggests. I desire merely to 
note, as a student of history, the disap- 
pearance of the old idea of representative 
government and the fast-growing tend- 
ency to deny some earlier principles which 
lay at the basis of New England, polity. 
The operation, and effect of this polity 
has played its part in the development of 
State and Nation, and in spite of the pres- 
ent pessimistic views of existing conditions 
and gloomier predictions for the future, 
has brought to humanity help and oppor- 
156 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

tunity for which the centuries which have 
passed furnished no precedent and no 
parallel. 

Among the great Pilgrim ideals, is this 
ideal of home and family as the center of 
the life in the New World, for whose pro- 
tection, development, and permanence not 
only forts and palisades were built, but 
laws and ordinances were also enacted. 

The Treaty 

On the first of April, 1621, occurred 
that scene in Pilgrim history in some re- 
spects the most interesting, significant, 
and important of all that the history of 
the time preserves. 

It is a fair day, as the chronicler de- 
scribes it, and the warm sunshine of the 
approaching spring illumines the hills and 
shores. The sun had barely passed its 
meridian when there appear upon the first 
street the two friendly Indians, Samoset 
and Squanto, familiar names, the guides 
and interpreters of the Pilgrims. They 
brought the startling message that Massa- 
157 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

soil and sixty of his men were fast ap- 
proaching. In an hour the Indians appear 
in plain sight on Watson's HiU. The Pil- 
grim Company assembles on the first 
street and on the summit of that hill the 
more numerous band of Indian warriors. 
Squanto goes over from the Pilgrims to 
the Indians as their interpreter and re- 
turns and reports that as a condition of 
the friendly visit there must be sent to the 
Indian chief a messenger and a hostage. 
For that difficult and dangerous task 
Winslow is selected. 

In imagination you see that gallant 
figure, his sword by his side, his armor 
flashing in the western sun, his arms filled 
with presents, a messenger of peace and 
good-will, a hostage among savage foes, as 
unattended he crosses the shallow brook 
by the ancient ford, ascends the hill, and 
now disappears among the trees. The anx- 
ious moments slowly pass, and now from 
the waiting Pilgrims the cry goes up, 
"They come! They come!" 

In single file, with silent step, one after 
158 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

another of the Indian warriors comes into 
view until twenty are seen marching 
slowly down the hill slope, and then, with 
"the roll of the stirring drum and the 
trumpet that sings of fame," the Pilgrim 
captain and Master Williamson and six 
musketeers march down the first street 
to meet at the brook the Indian band. 
And now they turn, and Pilgrim and In- 
dian, side by side, march up the hill and 
down the ancient street. It is a striking 
and suggestive picture, this first formal 
meeting here in Plymouth of the oncom- 
ing and the vanishing races. As the sav- 
age figures pass, the timid children shrink 
more closely to their mothers' sides and 
the stout hearts of the sturdy Pilgrims 
beat more quickly as they grasp their 
muskets and their eyes rest on those anx- 
ious faces. 

It is a strange and stirring sight as an 
eye-witness of that scene describes it. 
The tall, stately figures of the Indian 
warriors in the prime of their manhood, 
all strong men,' grave of countenance, 
159 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

spare of speech, their bows and arrows 
laid aside, some wearing skins over their 
shoulders, and some only a girdle about 
their loins. On the chief's neck rested a 
great string of white bone beads from 
which, over his dark chest, hung a long 
knife which glistened in the sunlight; a 
bag of tobacco hung on his neck behind, 
and in his hand he carried the pipe of 
peace. His face was painted a deep red 
like the color of a mulberry, and his fol- 
lowers' faces were marked and crossed, or 
wholly colored with black and yellow and 
white and red paint. 

And now they enter the house then 
building on the slope of Leyden Street, 
and seated on cushions and a green rug 
make the famous treaty. Its clear provi- 
sions bound them not to injure any of the 
Pilgrims, and if any one offended them the 
offender was to be sent to Plymouth for 
punishment. In case any of the Pilgrims' 
tools were taken, they were to be restored; 
if war were made on either Pilgrim or 
Indian, the other would promptly come 
IGO 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

to his assistance. To these conditions of 
peace they pledged the union of the neigh- 
boring tribes. Unarmed each would visit 
the other, and in return the Pilgrims gave 
assurance that King James, if the Indians 
kept the pledge, would esteem them as 
friendly allies. 

When the treaty was concluded, the 
Governor escorts the returning Indians to 
the brook, and another troop appears 
with Quadaquina, the king's brother, as 
their leader. But Winslow still lingers as 
a hostage in the Indian camp and the 
lengthening shadows fall before our mes- 
senger returns. "Samoset and Squanto 
slept that night in Plymouth ; and the king 
and all his men lay all night in the woods 
not above half an English mile from us, 
and all their wives and women with 
them," says the chronicler of that day, 
while the watchful sentinels passed to and 
fro. 

The provisions of the treaty were faith- 
fully kept for many a year. It was not un- 
til those who met and feasted and pledged 

161 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

the peace that day had long passed away 
that within the Kmits of the old colony 
the burning homes of the colonists, a pil- 
lar of flame by night and smoke by day, 
marked the course of the Indian foray. 
And Philip succeeds Massasoit before the 
blood of New England's sons fatten the 
cornfields, or the war-whoop awakens 
the sleep of the cradle. 

It was a high tribute which the Gov- 
ernor of Plymouth Colony fifty-four years 
later paid to the early colonists when he 
justly said that the "English did not pos- 
sess one foot of land in this colony but 
what was fairly obtained by honest pur- 
chase of the Indian proprietors." Then 
a solemn treaty was not regarded as "a 
mere scrap of paper." 

The agreement with the merchant ad- 
venturers involved and required a com- 
mon holding of property by the settlers 
for the term of seven years, at which time 
the real and personal property so held in 
com.mon would be divided in certain 
1C2 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

agreed proportions, as defined in the pre- 
ceding lecture, among the members of the 
company. But the conditions required, 
in the first instance, that immediate pro- 
vision should be made for the housing of 
the people. 

The first building to be constructed 
would naturally be a common house 
adapted for meetings, for the storage of 
common supplies, and for a place of resi- 
dence on shore while the private dwell- 
ings were being constructed. For the 
orderly housing of the people it was nec- 
essary that they should be divided into 
families or households, which as Bradford 
groups them were twenty-four in number, 
but when the land was measured on Janu- 
ary 7, 1621, provision was made for all the 
single men to join with some family, so 
that fewer houses might be built, and the 
number was then reduced to nineteen 
families. The record in Bradford's hand- 
writing of the meersteads and garden plots 
which were first laid out shows the first 
street, now Leyden Street, running from 
163 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRBIS 

the hill on the west to the sea on the east, 
and on the south side of that street seven 
lots. The great mortality of the first win- 
ter wiped out entirely four households, 
four others entirely escaped the sickness, 
and of the remaining sixteen households 
each lost one or more of its members. So 
that these seven houses on the south 
side of Leyden Street represented housing 
facilities for approximately seven persons 
each, which practically included the sur- 
viving members of the Pilgrim Company. 
In 1623 there was assigned to every fam- 
ily a parcel of land in proportion to the 
numbers, but only for present use. The 
next year the demand became insistent 
for a permanent division of land, which 
should grant not merely its present use, 
but such an absolute title as would insure 
its transmission by inheritance; and to 
every person was given one acre of land. 
The allotments show that the division 
was made in accordance not only with the 
then present numbers in each family; but 
also in some instances a larger number of 

1G4 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

acres, representing undoubtedly the origi- 
nal members of the family or the contribu- 
tions in money which had been made and 
in respect of which an additional share 
was received in the allotment. The total 
number of acres distributed among those 
who came in the " Mayflower " was sixty- 
nine. Thirty -three acres were allotted to 
those who came in the " Fortune," and 
ninety-five acres to those who came in the 
'' Ann " and the " Little James," the emi- 
grants in those four ships being designated 
as the "first comers." This division made 
an allotment of one hundred and ninety- 
seven acres in all. It was probably cleared 
land and was located along the water- 
front. 

Speaking generally, these lands are in- 
cluded within a strip extending some two 
miles along the shore and not more than a 
quarter of a mile wide in the widest part, 
and were undoubtedly the most available, 
convenient, and easily cultivated of the 
lands adapted to agricultural purposes in 
the first settlement, and were held in con- 
165 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PHLGRIMS 

formity with the provisions of the patent, 
according to the manor of East Green- 
wich, except that, as De Rasieres noted 
in his letter describing his visit in 1627, 
"The eldest son has an acknowledgment 
for his seniority of birth, which secured to 
him a double share." 

Now this division of lots was made 
necessary by what some are pleased to 
call the "infirmity of human nature," but 
which in fact appears in history as the 
most potent and helpful factor in the de- 
velopment and prosperity of the race. In 
the first place, as the Governor noted it, it 
made all hands very industrious. More 
corn was planted than would have been 
done in any other way, and as Bradford 
quaintly put it, "saved him a great deal 
of trouble and gave [them] far better con- 
tent." The women now went willingly 
into the field and with their little ones 
planted the corn. Before the allotment 
they would have alleged weakness and in- 
ability. To have exercised compulsion 
upon them would have been thought 
166 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

tyranny and oppression. The young men 
that were most fit for labor and service 
repined that they should spend their time 
and strength for other men's wives and 
children without return. " The strong, or 
man of parts, had no more in devission of 
victaile and cloaths, then he that was 
weake and not able to doe a quarter 
the other could." (Bradford.) 

To everybody but the unfit this seemed 
injustice. But it was thought indignity 
and disrespect to make no distinction in 
labor and its returns between the aged and 
wise and the younger and meaner sort. 
Neither wife nor husband could brook the 
slavery which commanded that the wife 
should do service for men other than her 
husband. The effect was that this course 
diminished the actual respect that should 
be preserved amongst them and "would 
have been worse if they had been men of 
another condition; Let none object this 
is man's corruption, and nothing to the 
course itself. I answer, seeing all men 
have this corruption in them, God, in His 
167 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PttGRIMS 

wisdom, saw another course fitter for 
them," said Bradford. 

The only two things that appear to re- 
main unchanged since the first syllable of 
recorded time are nature and human na- 
ture. The same procession of the seasons, 
the same planting and reaping, the same 
movements of the heavenly bodies and 
the tides, have endured from the begin- 
ning. 

"The mists that wrapped the Pilgrims* sleep 
Still brood upon the tide." 

And human nature is still as constant as 
in the early times, still fresh is human 
hope, still vigorous is human credulity. ^ 
' If it were impossible for communism to 
succeed on Leyden Street three hundred 
years ago in a homogeneous community, 
speaking the same language, governed by 
the same laws, with a common history, 
tradition, and memories, under the very 
environment which would seem to compel 
its success, living under a contract which 
required its adoption and acceptance, en- 
gaged in the same pursuits and in the 
168 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

presence of common perils, it is idle to 
argue that under the widely different and 
vastly more difficult and complicated 
conditions of the present, communism can 
prove a success, and human nature re- 
main unchanged. "The experience that 
was had in this commone course and 
condition, tried sundrie years, and that 
amongst godly and sober men, may well 
evince the vaniti of that conceite of Pla- 
tos and other ancients, applauded by 
some of later times; that the taking away 
of propertie, and bringing in communitie 
into a comonewealth, would make them 
happy and florishing; as if they were wiser 
than God." 

{ This lesson of the Pilgrim days may 
well commend itself to the student of 
modern problems and is a happy illustra- 
tion how their experience may still con- 
tinue to be of service. 

So the sagacious Bradford writes the 
story of the trial and failure of commu- 
nism in Plymouth. Under its impossible 
conditions and discipline "Personality 
169 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

and initiative are crushed. Each man 
watches his neighbor lest he be not doing 
his full share of work, each man is himself 
watched and all distrust all. The prom- 
ised freedom of action is hampered by 
this universal atmosphere of distrust." 
These words which I have just quoted 
might have been written by William 
Bradford in Plymouth. They picture, as 
he described, conditions in Plymouth as 
the result of the communistic govern- 
ment, but the language quoted is from 
a late report of a writer in the London 
"Times" who graphically portrays the 
communistic conditions in Russia in 1920. 
It is an interesting fact that this con- 
clusion which the Pilgrim reached was 
based on actual experience, but also that 
they had listened to the argument on the 
other side. Robert Cushman in the com- 
mon house on Leyden Street had preached 
his sermon, in November, 1621, on "The 
Sin and Danger of Self Love." In that dis- 
course he asks, "Why wouldst thou have 
thy particular portion but because thou 
170 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

thinkest to live better than thy neigh- 
bor?" To Satan he attributes the blame 
of bringing "this particularizing first into 
the world," and forcibly presents the argu- 
ment that "if others be idle and thou dili- 
gent, thy fellowship, provocation and ex- 
ample may well help to cure that malady 
in them, being together, but being asun- 
der, shall they not be more idle, and shall 
not gentry and beggary be quickly the 
glorious ensigns of your commonwealth?" 
The argument for communism is well 
stated by the lay preacher, who was 
about to depart to England not to return, 
and who took the opportunity to present 
to them some considerations for their ac- 
ceptance of the somewhat unfortunate 
agreernent he had made as their agent 
with the merchant adventurers' company, 
so distinctly communistic in character. 

But it was a condition and not a theory 
which confronted the sagacious leaders 
of the company. The reasons given by 
Bradford and their own experience were 
more persuasive and convincing, as to the 
171 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

course to be adopted, than the eariier ap- 
peal of Cushman, but it is fair to say that 
in some respects at least the case for com- 
munism has not been better presented in 
the past three hundred years than in the 
famous sermon of Robert Cushman. 

Among the present-day problems which 
attract attention, invite discussion, and 
result in much ill-considered and unwise 
action, is the question of the proper treat- 
ment of what are termed "undesirable 
citizens," who seek by force or violence to 
overturn constitutional government. At 
the present time deportation seems to be 
the peculiar penalty, with slight regard to 
evidence, and no reference to that great 
constitutional protection of the individ- 
ual, jury trial. 

I This problem was presented to the Pil- 
grims, and relatively was a much more 
serious one to the little company gathered 
upon the Plymouth hillside than that 
which presents itself to one hundred and 
ten millions of Americans to-day. 
172 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

A minister, not of their own choosing, 
by the name of John Lyford, was sent at 
the charge of the merchant adventurers 
to the Plymouth Plantation to be their 
pastor. He confessed his former disor- 
derly walking and his being entangled 
with many corruptions, the nature of 
which particularly appeared later in the 
investigations, but making a confession of 
his faith he was received into the church. 

In the later activities of Lyford he as- 
sociated himself with one John Oldham, 
and the two together seemed to have 
formed a conspiracy to create as great a 
faction as possible in the church and to 
overturn the church and commonwealth. 
Their efforts could not fail to attract the 
attention of the watchful leaders of the 
company. It was thought judicious as 
well as necessary in those simple days 
before making an arrest to secure the 
necessary evidence. The best evidence 
then, as now, is the written evidence in 
the handwriting of and signed by the sus- 
pected characters. 

173 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

When the ship sailed for England car- 
rying back with it the letters of Lyford, 
the Governor takes the shallop, boards 
the ship in the outer harbor, and seizes 
the Lyford letters, more than twenty in 
number, full of false accusations, tending 
not only to their prejudice, but to their 
ruin and utter subversion. The Governor 
returns with the letters or copies and 
bides his time. 

The delay naturally resulted in reliev- 
ing Lyford of any apprehension that the 
Governor had detected and obtained evi- 
dence of their plot, and the conspirators 
proceeded busily with their scheme. The 
Governor let things ripen in order to better 
discover the intent and see who of the 
company had joined in this perilous con- 
spiracy. Oldham and Lyford, thinking 
they were strong enough, began opera- 
tions. Oldham being called to stand as 
watch, refused to come, resisted the cap- 
tain, and drew his knife at him. The Gov- 
ernor, hearing the tumult, sent to quiet it, 
but Oldham raged more like a vicious beast 
174 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

than a man, and called them all traitors 
and rebels, and other such foul language 
as Bradford years after was ashamed to 
remember. But when they began to act 
publicly what they had long been plot- 
ting, the time had come for action. 

A court was called by the Governor, 
the whole company summoned to appear, 
and charges were filed against Lyf ord and 
Oldham. They denied everything and de- 
manded proof. Then the letters were 
read. Lyford was struck mute. Oldham 
raged and called upon his supporters to 
show their courage, thinking they would 
side with him in open rebellion. But his 
deluded followers, struck with the injus- 
tice of the position of Oldham and evi- 
dently appreciating that he had carried 
the matter very much farther than they 
had intended or he had even stated to 
them, stood silent. 

The result of the hearing was that no 
witness could be found to testify in their 
behalf, and their adherents, while admit- 
ting that they had attended some of their 
175 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

meetings, denied that they had agreed to 
adopt the poKcy and carry out the plans 
which Lyford had outhned to them. The 
trial resulted in a full conviction, and was 
followed by a complete confession on Ly- 
ford's part that all he had written was 
false and that he had wronged them be- 
yond possibility of amends. After the 
trial, conviction, and confession, the 
court ordered Lyford and Oldham to be 
expelled from Plymouth, Oldham to de- 
part at once, though permission was 
granted for his family to remain all winter 
until he could make provision for their 
comfortable removal, and Lyford had 
permission to remain six months. So 
mercy tempered justice. 

During the six months of grace which 
were allotted Lyford he was again de- 
tected in correspondence tending to in- 
jure the colony, but at its expiration he 
left the colony and later went from Massa- 
chusetts Bay to Virginia, where he shortly 
after died, and as Bradford quaintly 
states it, "I leave him to the Lord." 
176 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PILGRIMS 

Oldham in the spring, in violation of 
the terms of his sentence that he should 
not return without leave being first ob- 
tained, appeared in the streets of Plym- 
outh. His passions ran beyond the 
limits of all reason and modesty, so that 
some strangers who came with him were 
ashamed of his violence and rebuked him. 
He was promptly seized and committed 
to prison until he was tamer, and then, 
through a guard of musketeers, every one 
of whom was ordered to give him a 
"thump on the brich with the but end 
of his musket," he was conveyed to the 
waterside where a boat was ready to 
carry him away. " Then they bid him goe 
and mende his maners." 

Even at the present time, when depor- 
tation is the penalty in those offenses 
against order and government with 
which, unhappily, we are now familiar, is 
it not well to remember the example of the 
Pilgrims and require that there should be 
neither conviction nor sentence except 
after a fair trial, before an impartial jury, 
177 



PLYMOUTH AND THE PH^GRIMS 

and where the accused shall have full op- 
portunity to hear the testimony of the 
witnesses summoned against him, and to 
reply? 

And then the penalty may well be tem- 
pered with mercy according to the wise 
and approved rule of the great Pilgrim 
pastor in his letter to the Governor, the 
"punishment to a few and the fear to 
many." 

If for a moment we could lift the veil of 
the centuries and from out the shadowy 
past summon the form of one of the great 
leaders of that immortal company to 
stand forth and be their spokesman to-day, 
and bid the dumb lips speak again as in 
the olden time, this would be the Pil- 
grim's message which would fall on your 
attentive and listening ears: 

"The toils we bore 

Your ease have wrought. 
We sowed in tears. 

In joy you reap. 
That birthright we so dearly bought 

Here guard, till you with us shall sleep!*' 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 






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